pig gut metagenome Metagenome

Pigs of good and poor feed efficiency differ in their microbiota composition in intestinal digesta, whereas the role of the gut mucosal microbiota in the variation of pig's feed efficiency has not been fully elucidated. The present study therefore aimed to investigate the feed efficiency-related differences in the metabolically active mucosal bacterial microbiota in the cecum of finishing pigs. Pigs (n = 72) were ranked for their residual feed intake (RFI; metric for feed efficiency) between days 42 and 91 postweaning and were stratified within litter and sex into high (HRFI; n = 8) and low RFI (LRFI; n = 8). Cecal mucosa was collected on day 137-141 of life. After isolating total RNA from the mucosa, the RNA was transcribed into complementary DNA which was used for the gene expression experiment, total bacterial quantification and high-throughput sequencing (Illumina MiSeq) of the hypervariable V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene.