Differences in gut bacterial community composition between modern and slower-growing broiler breeder lines: Implications of growth selection on microbiome composition
Open Access
- 21 March 2023
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Frontiers Media SA in Frontiers in Physiology
- Vol. 14, 1151151
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2023.1151151
Abstract
In the last century broiler chicken lines have undergone an extensive breeding regime aimed primarily at growth and high meat yield. It is not known if breeding has also resulted in a change to the broiler breeder’s associated gut microbiota. Here we compared the gut microbiota of 37-week-old commercial Cobb breeding dams with dams from a broiler Legacy line which has not undergone selection since 1986. The dams from both lines were kept together in the same shed under the same management protocol from day of hatch to avoid additional confounders. We chose this age to allow significant bacterial exchange, thus avoiding exposure dependent artifacts and so that we could compare dams at the same developmental state of adulthood and peak laying performance. Significant differences in the composition of the cecum bacterial communities were found. Bacteria of the genus Akkermansia implicated in mucin degradation and associated with host metabolic health accounted for 4.98 ± 5.04% of the Cobb cecum community but were mostly absent from the ceca of the Legacy line dams. Inversely, Legacy dams had higher levels of Clostridiales, Lactobacillales and Aeromonadales. These results show that breeding has resulted in a change in the gut microbiota composition, likely by changing the physiological conditions in the mucosa. It remains unclear if changes in gut microbiota composition are a part of the mechanism affecting growth or are a secondary result of other physiological changes accelerating growth. Therefore, the identification of these changes opens the door to further targeted research.Funding Information
- Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
- United States—Israel Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund
This publication has 46 references indexed in Scilit:
- Vaginal pH and Microbicidal Lactic Acid When Lactobacilli Dominate the MicrobiotaPLOS ONE, 2013
- Cross-talk between Akkermansia muciniphila and intestinal epithelium controls diet-induced obesityProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013
- Quantitative Genetic Background of the Host Influences Gut Microbiomes in ChickensScientific Reports, 2013
- Effects of Gut Microbes on Nutrient Absorption and Energy RegulationNutrition in Clinical Practice, 2012
- An improved Greengenes taxonomy with explicit ranks for ecological and evolutionary analyses of bacteria and archaeaThe ISME Journal, 2011
- Dominance of Prevotella and low abundance of classical ruminal bacterial species in the bovine rumen revealed by relative quantification real-time PCRApplied Microbiology and Biotechnology, 2007
- Carbohydrate fermentation in the avian ceca: a reviewAnimal Feed Science and Technology, 2004
- Growth, livability, and feed conversion of 1957 versus 2001 broilers when fed representative 1957 and 2001 broiler dietsPoultry Science, 2003
- The effects of genetic selection for increased growth rate on mucosal and muscle weights in the different regions of the small intestine of the domestic fowl (Gallus domesticus)Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Physiology, 1991
- Basic local alignment search toolJournal of Molecular Biology, 1990