pig gut Metagenome

The microbiome in feed has hardly been characterized using this molecular-based approach. The present study aimed to characterize the bacterial communities in different sow and piglet complete feeds. As pigs commonly root around in their bedding and thus also partially consume it, straw and sawdust were also investigated in our study. A total of seven types of pig feed and bedding material were analyzed for their bacterial community. The feed samples comprised two sow feeds (gestation and lactation diet), two piglet feeds (milk replacer and pre-starter), as well as linseed, straw, and sawdust. The DNA was isolated using a commercial kit and sequenced using Illumina chemistry. The V3-V4 hypervariable regions of bacterial 16S rRNA gene were amplified using a 250 bp read length paired-end protocol (Novogene) on an Illumina Novaseq 6000 platform, including the library preparation (NEBNext Ultra II DNA Library Prep Kit) and sequencing.