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Gut response induced by weaning in piglet features marked changes in immune and inflammatory response

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Abstract

At weaning, piglets are exposed to many stressors, such as separation from the sow, mixing with other litters, end of lactational immunity, and a change in their environment and gut microbiota. The sudden change of feeding regime after weaning causes morphological and histological changes in the small intestine which are critical for the immature digestive system. Sixteen female piglets were studied to assess the effect of sorbic acid supplementation on the small intestine tissue transcriptome. At weaning day (T0, piglet age 28 days), four piglets were sacrificed and ileal tissue samples collected. The remaining 12 piglets were weighed and randomly assigned to different postweaning (T5, piglet age 33 days) diets. Diet A (n = 6) contained 5 g/kg of sorbic acid. In diet B (n = 6), the organic acids were replaced by barley flour. Total RNA was isolated and then hybridized to CombiMatrix CustomArray™ 90-K platform microarrays, screening about 30 K genes. Even though diet had no detectable effect on the transcriptome during the first 5 days after weaning, results highlighted some of the response mechanisms to the stress of weaning occurring in the piglet gut. A total of 205 differentially expressed genes were used for functional analysis using the bioinformatics tools BLAST2GO, Ingenuity Pathway Analysis 8.0, and Dynamic Impact Approach (DIA). Bioinformatic analysis revealed that apoptosis, RIG-I-like, and NOD-like receptor signaling were altered as a result of weaning. Interferons and caspases gene families were the most activated after weaning in response to piglets to multiple stressors. Results suggest that immune and inflammatory responses were activated and likely are a cause of small intestine atrophy as revealed by a decrease in villus height and villus/crypt ratio.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Alberto Ferrarini (Functional Genomics Center, University of Verona, Italy) for his technical assistance in the microarray experiment. This work was conducted in the framework of the project “Nutrigenomics” supported by the “Fondazione Romeo ed Enrica Invernizzi,” Milan, Italy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Istituto di Zootecnica, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza, Italy

    Lorenzo Bomba, Andrea Minuti, Erminio Trevisi, Elisa Eufemi, Giuseppe Bertoni & Paolo Ajmone-Marsan

  2. Centro di Ricerca Nutrigenomica e Proteomica—PRONUTRIGEN, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza, Italy

    Lorenzo Bomba, Andrea Minuti, Erminio Trevisi, Michela Lizier, Fatima Chegdani, Franco Lucchini, Aldo Prandini, Filippo Rossi, Giuseppe Bertoni & Paolo Ajmone-Marsan

  3. Mammalian NutriPhysioGenomics, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

    Sonia J. Moisá & Juan J. Loor

  4. Istituto Clinico Humanitas IRCSS, Rozzano, Milano, Italy

    Michela Lizier

  5. Laboratoire de Physiologie et Génétique Moléculaire, Université Hassan II Aïn Chock, Casablanca, Morocco

    Fatima Chegdani

  6. Centro Ricerche Biotecnologiche, Istituto di Microbiologia, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Cremona, Italy

    Franco Lucchini

  7. Istituto di Scienze degli Alimenti e della Nutrizione, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza, Italy

    Marcin Rzepus, Aldo Prandini & Filippo Rossi

  8. Associazione Italiana Allevatori, Rome, Italy

    Raffaele Mazza

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  1. Lorenzo Bomba
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  2. Andrea Minuti
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Correspondence to Lorenzo Bomba.

Electronic supplementary material

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Online Resource 1

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for clusterig gene expression data: a) Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for clusterig gene expression data of 12 selected piglet. In the analysis were included the 4 piglets of T0 group (colored in yellow) , the 4 healthies animal of T5 group (colored in red) and the 4 most diarrheal subjects of T5 group (colored in blue). The animals were selected based on the clinical and hematological measurament. b) percentage of the total variance explained by each principal component. (PDF 275 kb)

Online Resource 2

Differentially expressed genes (DGE) comparing T5 with T0: List of the 205 DGE comparing T5 with T0 together with log fold-change and qvalue (XLS 107 kb)

Online Resource 3

Differentially expressed genes (DGE) mapped and annotated using the IPA software: Differentially expressed genes (DGE) found in the ileum of piglets, in response to weaning that were mapped and annotated using the IPA software. The accession number derived from a blast to the homology sequence in human NCBI nr database. (PDF 186 kb)

Online Resource 4

Networks ranking: Networks ranking with relative molecules symbols list, Score value, number of molecules belonging to the dataset (Focus molecules) and top function for each network. (PDF 91 kb)

Online Resource 5

KEGG pathways graphs: KEGG pathways graphs with the fold change value of the DEG denoted with colour scales. (XLS 1343 kb)

Online Resource 6

Dynamic Impact Approach (DIA) based on DAVID and Interpro (IP): Results of flux and impact of DAVID Biological Process (BP), Cellular Component (CC), Molecular Function (MF), and IP uncovered by the DIA with impact value above the 30 % of the maximum total impact in swine transcriptome. (XLS 131 kb)

Online Resource 7

Connections between the most relevant GO Terms from DIA results: Connections between the most relevant GO Terms from DIA results for each DEG present in the most impacted KEGG pathways. each gene is associated with the KEGG pathway where it has a role, and each GO Term (biological processes, molecular function, cellular component, and Interpro) sorted from higher to lower impact. (XLS 68 kb)

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Bomba, L., Minuti, A., Moisá, S.J. et al. Gut response induced by weaning in piglet features marked changes in immune and inflammatory response. Funct Integr Genomics 14, 657–671 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10142-014-0396-x

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