The Effects Of Dietary Supplementation With Chinese Herbs On Wenchang Chicken Gut Microbiomes

With increasing pressure to reduce or eliminate the use of antimicrobials to promote growth in animal production, there is an increasing need to find effective, stable and safe natural alternatives. Among the potential candidates, Chinese herbs represent a new and exciting group of feed additives. However, the specific mechanisms of these herbs possess both antimicrobial and growth-promoting capabilities are still unknown. For this reason, we evaluated the effects of Chinese herbs as potential growth promoters on the gut microbiota in Wen Chang chicken using pyrosequencing of the 16 S r RNA gene libraries.Chicken(36 days old) were randomly assigned to two groups, experimental group,n=10 and control group, n=10. The control animals were fed a commercial diet, and the experimental animals were fed a commercial diet supplemented with Chinese herbs(5kg/ton). Fecal samples were collected from each chick at 36d?46d?53d?61d?71d?80d?94d?115d for 16 S r RNA gene composition analysis. The results revealed changes in the Chao1?ACE and Shannon diversity indices of the gut microbiota, not only due to the age of the chicken but also in response to the use of Chinese herbs. What's more, the PCA,PCo A and NMDS analysis indicated that Chinese herbs had significant effects on chicken gut microbiota composition, and as compared to the age, the percent of Chinese herbs contributed to the differences between the gut microbiota was 36.00%.Community structure analysis was conducted to describe and compare the composition of the gut microbiota in chicken that received or did not receive Chinese herbs and how their microbiota changed over time. At the phylum level, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Bacteroidetes were the most dominant in the fecal samples regardless of the age of the chicken or the treatment group. In both groups, the proportion of Bacteroidetes decreased as the chicken aged, whereas the proportions of Firmicutes decreased. As compared to thecontrol group, the distribution of Actinobacteria and Fusobacteria was significant lower. At the class level, the proportions of Deltaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria were more abundant in the experiment group, while the proportions of Actinobacteria and Fusobacteria were more abundant in the control group. At the genus level, the genera Acidovorax, Anaerofilum, Anaerofustis, Catenibacterium, Corynebacterium,Fusobacterium, Kurthia, Megasphaera, Mitsuokella, Olsenella and Oribacterium were detected as more abundant in the control group than the experiment group, whereas Lactobacillus, Comamonas, Peptococcus and Succinivibrio were more frequently present in the experiment group than in the control group.All those results revealed that the chicken gut microbiota especially the less abundant genera shifted in response to the use of Chinese herbs and chicken age was also the important reason for gut microbiota variation.