Gastrointestinal microbiota and metabolites responses to dietary cereal grains in an adult pig model

Ganyi Feng; Menglong Deng; Rui Li; Gaifeng Hou; Qing Ouyang; Xianji Jiang; Xiaojie Liu; Hui Tang; Fengming Chen; Shihua Pu; Dan Wan; Yulong Yin

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2024.1442077

Gastrointestinal microbiota and metabolites responses to dietary cereal grains in an adult pig model

Front Microbiol. 2024 Sep 17:15:1442077. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1442077. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Ganyi Feng¹, Menglong Deng², Rui Li¹, Gaifeng Hou¹, Qing Ouyang², Xianji Jiang^{1

2}, Xiaojie Liu^{1

2}, Hui Tang^{1

2}, Fengming Chen³, Shihua Pu^{4

5}, Dan Wan¹, Yulong Yin¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Agro-Ecological Processes in Subtropical Region, Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Nutritional Physiology and Metabolic Process, Hunan Research Center of Livestock and Poultry Sciences, South Central Experimental Station of Animal Nutrition and Feed Science in the Ministry of Agriculture, National Engineering Laboratory for Poultry Breeding Pollution Control and Resource Technology, Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changsha, China.
² College of Animal Science and Technology, Hunan Co-Innovation Center of Animal Production Safety, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, China.
³ Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of the TCM Agricultural Biogenomics, Changsha Medical University, Changsha, China.
⁴ Chongqing Academy of Animal Science, Rongchang, Chongqing, China.
⁵ National Center of Technology Innovation for Pigs, Chongqing, China.

Abstract

Corn (C), wheat (W), and paddy rice (PR) are important energy sources and are commonly used in feed production for swine. This study mainly focuses on the variation and regularities of microbiota and metabolites in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) of pigs in response to C, W, and PR. A total of 18 pigs were allotted into three dietary groups with six replicated pigs and received diets containing C, W, or PR as the sole energy source, respectively. The results showed that digestive parts significantly affected the diversity of microbial communities. Cereal grain sources significantly influenced the β-diversity of microbial communities in the colon and rectum. Campylobacterota and Proteobacteria are mainly distributed in the duodenum, Lactobacillus in the jejunum, and Bacteroidota in the colon and rectum. The W diet increased the Bacteroidota, Spirochaetota, and Prevotellaceae_NK3B31_group abundances and showed the highest concentrations of all short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in the hindgut. Fibrobacterota, Bacteroidota, Spirochaetota, Prevotellaceae_NK3B31_group, Prevotella, and Treponema in the colon or rectum were positively correlated with acetate, propionate, butyrate, and total SCFAs. These findings suggested that aerobic bacteria and facultative anaerobes in the foregut will gradually be replaced by anaerobes in the hindgut. The W diet had the best fermentability and was beneficial to the colonization of microbial communities that mainly used carbohydrates. The hindgut flora of the PR diet group may be more balanced with fewer potential pathogenic bacteria. Many microbial communities have been identified to contribute positively to the SCFA production of the hindgut. Collectively, our study revealed the spatial variation regularities of GIT microbial communities in an adult pig model and provided new insights into GIT microbiota and responses of metabolites to cereal grain diets.

Keywords: GIT; SCFAs; corn; microbial community; paddy rice; wheat.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study is supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32472957), National Key Research and Development Program (2021YFD1300201 and 2021YFD1301004), National Center of Technology Innovation for Pigs (NCTIP- XDB18), the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (16190298, 16200142, and 20210406), the Key Project of Science and Technology of Yunnan Province (202202AE090032), the Science and Technology Innovation Program of Hunan Province (2020RC2063), the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2022JJ40532), and the Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Agro-ecological Processes in Subtropical Region, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISA2021103 and ISA2023201).