Swine Nutrition and Environment

Modulation of Porcine Gut Microbiota and Microbiome: Hologenomic, Dietary, and Endogenous Factors

“…Honeyman [ 2 ] comprehensively reviewed the major sustainability issues, including economic, environmental, and social sustainability, that swine production faced in the US. Unfortunately, almost 30 years after, these sustainability issues still persistently exist in the pig industry in the US [ 3 , 4 ] and other advanced industrial countries [ 5 , 6 ] and have been further expanded and intensified in the rest of the global intensive pig production regions [ 7 , 8 ]. On the one hand, this serves as a testimonial that resolving some of the fundamental animal biological questions and associated technological innovations associated with swine production is very challenging; on the other hand, it also calls for swine researchers to have resilience in pursuing their research efforts and for society to consistently give the much-needed and long-term support and investment for research resources.…”

“…On the one hand, this serves as a testimonial that resolving some of the fundamental animal biological questions and associated technological innovations associated with swine production is very challenging; on the other hand, it also calls for swine researchers to have resilience in pursuing their research efforts and for society to consistently give the much-needed and long-term support and investment for research resources. Under this context, the porcine gut microbiota and microbiome have been recognized as the central focus for improvements in pig nutrition, physiology, and thus productivity and health [ 8 , 9 ]. Thus, papers in this Special Issue of Pathogens have been collected to reflect and shed light on some of the ongoing active research by the global research community in this topic area.…”

“…However, they were only able to detect significantly higher abundances of two bacterial species of Clostridium jeddahitimonense and C. beijerinckii that were involved in starch and prebiotic sugar utilization evident from the literature in the light final BW finisher group [ 10 ]. It is well established that dietary starch and sugar digestive utilization are not limiting factors in feeder pigs [ 8 ]. It is conceivable that the V1–V3 partial region of the 16S rRNA gene sequencing platform that was used in the study by Fowler et al [ 10 ] had a limited resolution to allow for quantifying bacterial relative abundance changes at the species level.…”

“…They further showed that N -deglycosylation of IAP and TNAP along the porcine small–large intestinal longitudinal axis could effectively modulate the plasticity of weaned porcine gut AP functionality in terms of the maximal activity and affinity of these AP enzymes. Optimal gut microbiota and microbiome improve not only the efficiency of the digestive utilization but also the post-digestive utilization of dietary energy and nutrients [ 8 , 37 , 38 , 39 ]. The effects of dietary supplementation of the hydrolyzed guar gum at 0.06% on the gut microbiome responses [ 29 ]; the F18 + E. coli -challenge-induced gut dysbiosis and differential jejunal and fecal gut microbiome responses [ 22 ]; and the butyrate supplementation in mitigating the LPS-induced changes in intestinal morphology, microbiome, energy utilization, and inflammation in pigs [ 39 ] were all likely mediated through gut endogenous AP functional plasticity; however, these interplay and connections were not established in these studies.…”