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In the swine industry, early weaning can improve sow reproductive performance and farrowing room utilization. However, early weaned piglets tend to have impaired gut morphological structure and function disorders. Traditionally, dietary antibiotics supplementation has been considered as an efficient strategy to solve this problem, but there is a tendency to decrease its use due to the detrimental effects on gut commensal bacteria and side effects in both human and animal health. Recently, it has been demonstrated that probiotics could be a novel alternative to feed antibiotics. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of a probiotic, dietary Bacillus subtilis (BS), on the intestinal microbiota composition and metabolites of weaned pigs. For that purpose, sixty-four piglets were allocated to two groups (control and BS). Piglets in the control group were fed basal diet and the experiment group’s piglets were fed basal diet supplemented with 500 g. At the end of the trial, one pig in each pen was slaughtered to collect the luminal contents in jejunum, ileum and middle colon for microbiota and metabolites analysis. The jejunum and ileum tissues were collected for morphology measurement.
As a result, it was found dietary BS increased the abundances of jejunal Leucobacter and Cupriavidus, ileal Thermus, Coprococcus and Bifidobacterium, as well as colonic Succiniclasticum; and increased the concentrations of ileal straight-chain fatty acids, colonic propionate, branched-chain fatty acids, and tyramine, but decreased the colonic indole concentration. The ileal and colonic microbial community structure tended to cluster into two groups. LEfSe analysis identified five microbial biomarkers in jejunum and eight biomarkers in ileum in the BS group, and three biomarkers in colon in the control group. The ileal Bifidobacterium abundance was positively correlated with isovalerate concentration, while the colonic Actinobacteria and Lactobacillus abundances were negatively correlated with indole concentration.
As a conclusion, these findings suggest that dietary supplementation with Bacillus subtilis could alter the diversity, composition, and metabolites of intestinal microbiota in weaned piglets.
Ding H, Zhao X, Ma C, Gao Q, Yin Y, Kong X, He J. Dietary supplementation with Bacillus subtilis DSM 32315 alters the intestinal microbiota and metabolites in weaned piglets. Journal of Applied Microbiology. 2021; 130(1): 217-232. https://doi.org/10.1111/jam.14767