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Alterations in cecal microbiota of Jinhua piglets fostered by a Yorkshire sow

  • Article
  • Animal Genetics
  • Published:
Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

Gut microbiota play important roles in host health and diseases. Several factors, in particular antibiotics, affect the gut microbiota of pigs. Cross-fostering has been applied as a regular practice to equalize litter size, reduce pre-weaning mortality and increase body weight. However, the effect of cross-fostering on cecal microbiota is unclear. In this study, we fostered three Jinhua pigs to a Yorkshire sow. The fostered Jinhua piglets grew significantly faster than their biological siblings. To explore whether the cecal microbiota of piglets will alter during fostering, we characterized the cecal microbiota of all piglets by examining the V3 hypervariable region of 16S rDNA. We observed altered cecal microbiota in these piglets using the Illumina HiSeq 2000 platform, and this was accompanied with an increase in growth rate after fostering. The relative abundance of Bacteroidetes in the fostered Jinhua piglets was decreased compared with their biological siblings, although still higher in comparison with their new littermates. Beta-diversity analysis also showed that the cecal microbiota of the adopted Jinhua piglets differed from their biological siblings with a shift toward their step-siblings. Our data show that cecal microbiota of piglets were altered after cross-fostering while the growth rate increased.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Pinger Lou and Xiaoli Zhang for assistance with sample collections. We also thank Xingyong Ma for critically reading this manuscript. This work was supported by the National Special Foundation for Transgenic Species of China (2014ZX0800950B, 2011ZX08006-003), the Specialized Research Fund of Ministry of Agriculture of China (NYCYTX-009), the Fund of Fok Ying-Tung Education Foundation (141117), the Fund for Distinguished Young Scientists of Sichuan Province (2013JQ0013), the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT13083) to Mingzhou Li and Xuewei Li, and the “100-Talent Program” in Sichuan Science Foundation for Youths of Sichuan Province to Ying Li.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya’an, 625014, China

    Lingjin Xian, Ying Li, Jideng Ma, Long Jin, Chaowei Zhou, Jie Zhang, Yingkai Liu, Li Zhu, An-an Jiang, Guoqing Tang, Jian Xiao, Bo Zeng, Mingzhou Li & Xuewei Li

  2. Chengdu Vocational College of Agricultural Science and Technology, Chengdu, 611130, China

    Lingjin Xian

  3. Novogene Bioinformatics Institute, Beijing, 100083, China

    Zhi Jiang

  4. Chongqing Academy of Animal Science, Chongqing, 402460, China

    Lei Chen & Jinyong Wang

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  1. Lingjin Xian
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Mingzhou Li or Xuewei Li.

Additional information

Lingjin Xian, Ying Li and Zhi Jiang contributed equally to this work.

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11434_2014_532_MOESM1_ESM.xls

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11434_2014_532_MOESM2_ESM.xls

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11434_2014_532_MOESM3_ESM.xls

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11434_2014_532_MOESM4_ESM.tif

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Xian, L., Li, Y., Jiang, Z. et al. Alterations in cecal microbiota of Jinhua piglets fostered by a Yorkshire sow. Chin. Sci. Bull. 59, 4304–4311 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0532-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0532-y

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