Tracing of the fecal microbiota of commercial pigs at five growth stages from birth to shipment

Abstract

The intestinal microbiota affect various physiological traits of host animals such as brain development, obesity, age, and the immune system. In the swine industry, understanding the relationship between intestinal microbiota and growth stage is essential because growth stage is directly related to the feeding system of pigs, thus we studied the intestinal microbiota of 32 healthy pigs across five sows at 10, 21, 63, 93, and 147 d of ages. The intestinal microbiota were altered with growth of pigs and were separated into three distinct clusters. The relative abundance of several phyla and genera were significantly different between growth stages. We observed co-occurrence pattern of the intestinal microbiota at each growth stage. In addition, we predicted the functions of the intestinal microbiota and confirmed that several KEGG pathways were significantly different between growth stages. We also explored the relationship between the intestinal microbiota and innate factors such as the maternal effect and gender. When pigs were young, innate factors affected on construction of intestinal microbiota, however this tendency was disappeared with growth. Our findings broaden the understanding of microbial ecology, and the results will be used as a reference for investigating host-microbe interactions in the swine industry.

Longitudinal Analysis of the Microbiota Composition and Enterotypes of Pigs from Post-Weaning to Finishing

“…At a family level, the main changes in abundance appeared between post-weaning and finishing in accordance with previous findings [21]. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the microbiota composition kept evolving during all tested stages based on the NMDS and the relative abundance at family and genus levels in line with the results of Kim et al [24] despite previous studies demonstrating that a stabilized composition of the microbiota was reached around three months of age [22,23].…”

“…In our experiment, the diversity increased when the pigs were aging, as previously observed [20][21][22]. At the phylum level, the Firmicutes' relative abundance increased especially between post-weaning and finishing periods [22] and remained stable during the late-stages [23]. In accordance with Han et al [23], the relative abundance of Spirochaetes increased during the finishing period.…”

“…At the phylum level, the Firmicutes' relative abundance increased especially between post-weaning and finishing periods [22] and remained stable during the late-stages [23]. In accordance with Han et al [23], the relative abundance of Spirochaetes increased during the finishing period. However, our results on the relative abundances…”

“…At the phylum level, the Firmicutes' relative abundance increased especially between post-weaning and finishing periods [22] and remained stable during the late-stages [23]. In accordance with Han et al [23], the relative abundance of Spirochaetes increased during the finishing period. However, our results on the relative abundances of Spirochaetes, Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes differed from those of Zhao et al [22] where Actinobacteria gradually replaced Spirochaetes and Bacteroidetes increased as the pigs grow older.…”

Dietary inclusion of Peptiva, a peptide-based feed additive, can accelerate the maturation of the fecal bacterial microbiome in weaned pigs

“…The second potential activity of the Peptiva product investigated in this study was the ability to change or modulate the composition of the gut microbiome in weaned pigs. Since the composition of gut microbial communities has been associated with the health status and performance of individual hosts [3,[35][36][37], compounds that can change gut symbiont profiles have the potential to be developed as tools to improve critical livestock production parameters [38]. To this end, fecal bacterial communities were used as a proxy for gut microbiome composition analysis in weaned pigs, from which two main observations were made: evidence of bacterial succession between Phase II and Phase III in control-fed animals, and a stage-specific effect in Pep-fed pigs.…”