Fermented liquid feed enhances bacterial diversity in piglet intestine

Kiyoshi Tajima, Hideyuki Ohmori, Rustam Irekovitch Aminov, Yuri Kobashi, Tomoyuki Kawashima

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Because of limitations imposed on the antibiotic use in animal industry, there is a need for alternatives to maintain the efficiency of production. One of them may be the use of fermented liquid feed (FLF) but how it affects gut ecology is poorly understood. We investigated the effect of three diets, standard dry feed (control), dry feed supplemented with antibiotics, and fermented liquid feed (FLF, fermented with Lactobacillus plantarum), on gut bacterial diversity in piglets. The structure of the ileal and caecal communities was estimated by sequencing the SSU rRNA gene libraries. Antibiotic-supplemented feed slightly increased bacterial diversity in the ileum but reduced it in the caecum while in FLF-fed animals bacterial diversity was elevated. The majority of bacterial sequences in the ileum of all three groups belonged to lactobacilli (92-98%). In the caecum the lactobacilli were still dominant in control and antibiotic-fed animals (59% and 64% of total bacterial sequences, respectively) but in FLIF-fed animals they fell to 31% with the concomitant increase in the Firmicutes diversity represented by the Dorea, Caprococcus, Roseburia and Faecalibacterium genera. Thus FLF affects the gut ecology in a different way than antibiotics and contributes to the enhanced bacterial diversity in the gastrointestinal tract.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)6-11
Number of pages6
JournalAnaerobe
Volume16
Issue number1
Early online date23 Apr 2009
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2010

Keywords

  • fermented liquid feed
  • intestinal microbiota
  • piglet
  • weanling pigs
  • indigenous lactobacilli
  • gastrointestinal-tract
  • growth-performance
  • antibiotics
  • microbiology
  • population
  • quality
  • diet
  • gut

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