Starter Feeding Supplementation Alters Colonic Mucosal Bacterial Communities and Modulates Mucosal Immune Homeostasis in Newborn Lambs

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effect of starter feeding supplementation on colonic mucosal bacterial communities and on mucosal immune homeostasis in pre-weaned lambs. We selected eight pairs of 10-day-old lamb twins. One twin was fed breast milk (M, n = 8), while the other was fed breast milk plus starter (M+S, n = 8). The lambs were sacrificed at 56 days age. Colonic content was collected to determine the pH and the concentrations of volatile fatty acids (VFA) and lactate. The colonic mucosa was harvested to characterize the bacterial communities using Illumina MiSeq sequencing and to determine mRNA expression levels of cytokines and toll-like receptors (TLR) using quantitative real-time PCR. The results show that starter feeding decreased luminal pH and increased the concentrations of acetate, propionate, butyrate, total VFA, and lactate in the colon. The principal coordinate analysis (PCA) and analysis of molecular variance show that starter feeding supplementation significantly affected the colonic mucosal bacterial communities with a higher relative abundance of the dominant taxa unclassified S24-7, Oscillibacter, Prevotella, Parabacteroides, Bifidobacterium, Ruminobacter, and Succinivibrio, and a lower proportion of unclassified Ruminococcaceae, RC9_gut_group, Blautia, Phocaeicola, Phascolarctobacterium, unclassified BS11_gut_group, unclassified family_XIII, and Campylobacter in lambs. Meanwhile, starter feeding decreased mRNA expression of TLR4 and cytokines TNF-α and IFN-γ in colonic tissue. Furthermore, the changes in the colonic mucosal mRNA expression of TLR and cytokines were associated with changes in mucosal bacterial composition. These findings may provide new insights into colonic mucosal bacteria and immune homeostasis in developing lambs.

From Maternal Grazing to Barn Feeding During Pre-weaning Period: Altered Gastrointestinal Microbiota Contributes to Change the Development and Function of the Rumen and Intestine of Yak Calves

“…Our results indicate that the yak calves in the barn feeding group provided the milk replacer, starter feed, and alfalfa hay during early life showed improved growth performance and organ development, in accordance with the results of previous studies on lambs during early life (Liu et al, 2017;Saro et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2018). These significantly improved growth performance were resulted from the significantly increased daily DMI of yak calves from barn feeding group.…”

“…Adequate nutrition during early life is beneficial to gastrointestinal development, immunity, and the subsequent functional transition from metabolizing the lactose from milk to the volatile fatty acids (VFAs) from a solid diet (Liu et al, 2017;Saro et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2018); this transition could result in tremendous gastrointestinal metabolism and immunity alterations for the growth rate of calves (Shade et al, 2012). Many previous studies have proved that the growth performance and carcass characteristics of yaks could be improved under barn feeding when compared with maternal grazing conditions (Dong et al, 2006;Raghuvansi et al, 2007;Baruah et al, 2012;Chen et al, 2015).…”

Bacterial Community Dynamics across the Gastrointestinal Tracts of Dairy Calves during Preweaning Development

“…Concomitant with the increase of amylolytic bacteria, we also observed that the abundance of bacteria in the genera Lactobacillus (lower gut) and Faecalibacterium (large intestine) decreased in older calves. A similar observation has been made for fecal samples of older calves (11,22) as well as for the colonic mucosae of lambs fed with milk plus starter instead of only milk (41). Taken together, these results suggest an inverse relationship between starter concentrate intake and colonization by Lactobacillus and Faecalibacterium in the lower gut.…”

Peer Review #2 of "Yak rumen microbial diversity at different forage growth stages of an alpine meadow on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (v0.1)"

“…Abreu (2010) reported that Toll-like receptors (TLR) as a receptors which can mediating innate immune responses, and related microbiota. Liu et al (2017) showed that newborn lambs with concentrates starter feeding increased the colonic mucosal mRNA expression of TLR and expression of TLR was associated with changes in the abundances of some specific bacteria like unclassified S24-7. Trevisi et al (2014) indicated that bovine rumen can received the immune cells.…”