Background: There are growing evidences showing that gut microbiota should play an important role in host appetite and feeding behavior. However, what kind of microbe(s) and how they affect porcine appetite remain unknown.
Results: In this study, 280 commercial Duroc pigs were raised in a testing station with the circadian feeding behavior records for a continuous period of 30-100 kg. We first analyzed the influences of host gender and genetics in porcine average daily feed intake (ADFI), but no significant effect was observed. We found that the Prevotella-predominant enterotype had a higher ADFI than the Treponema enterotype-like group. Furthermore, 12 out of the 18 OTUs positively associated with the ADFI were annotated to Prevotella, and Prevotella was the hub bacteria in the co-abundance network. These results suggested that Prevotella might be a keystone bacterial taxon for increasing host feed intake. However, some bacteria producing short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and lactic acid (e.g. Ruminococcaceae and Lactobacillus) showed negative associations with the ADFI. Predicted function capacity analysis showed that the genes for amino acid biosynthesis had significantly different enrichment between pigs with high and low ADFI.
Conclusions: The present study provided important information on the profound effect of gut microbiota on porcine appetite and feeding behavior. This will profit us to regulate porcine appetite through modulating the gut microbiome in the pig industry.
Keywords: 16S rRNA; Enterotype; Feed intake; Function prediction; Gut microbiota; Pig.