The Unintended Effects Of Long-term Intergenerational Feeding Transgenic Maize Diets To Pure Line White Leghorn Chickens On The Intestinal Health

The objective was to investigate the trans-generationally unintended effect of feeding transgenic corn line containing the maroACC gene from Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain(CC)or the m Cry1 Ac gene from Bacillus thuringiensis strain(BT)to laying hens and offspring on intestinal development,microbiota and mucosal protromics using the pure-line White Leghorn hen as a model.Seventy-two50-week-old laying hens were randomly divided into 3 dietary treatments(8 replicates/treatment,3hens/replicate): 1)nontransgenic near-isoline corn-based diet(CT);2)CC corn-based diet(CC)and 3)BT corn-based diet(BT).After 12 weeks,laying hens were artificial fertilized and fertile eggs were hatched,then got the offspring layers.The offspring were randomly deigned to one of 3 dietary treatments according to parental hens: 1)CT maize diet fed parental hens/ CT maize diet fed offspring chicken(CT-CT),2)CC maize diet fed parental hens/ CC maize diet fed offspring chicken(CC-CC),and 3)BT maize diet fed parental hens/ BT maize diet fed offspring chicken(BT-BT).The male and female birds were kept separately.The roosters were assigned to 3 dietary treatments(6replicates/treatment,6 roosters/replicate)for 32 weeks and the hens were assigned to 3 dietary treatments(8 replicates/treatment,3 hens/replicate)for 36 weeks.One bird per replicate(6roosters/treatment and 8 hens/treatment)was humanely euthanized at the end of the experience and a gross necropsy was performed.The objective of Exp.1 was to investigate the effects of trans-generational feeding transgenic maroACC maize or mCry1 Ac transgenic maize on the intestinal development of offspring hens.Body weight and intestinal length were recorded.Intestines were sampled for histological analysis.No differences in the weight-corrected length of the small intestine,large intestine and the whole intestine and villus height of the small intestine were observed in the birds fed the 3 maize diets.No differences in the villus height,crypt depth and villus height/ crypt depth of laying hens fed diets containing the CC-CC or BT-BT corn.No visible pathological changes of small intestinal histology were observed in all groups.The objective of Exp.2 was to investigate the effects of trans-generational feeding transgenic maroACC maize or mCry1 Ac transgenic maize on the cecal microbita of offspring hens.The relative abundance of cecal bacteria was determined using high-throughput 16 S rRNA sequencing by the V3-V4 region.There were no significant differences in the alpha diversity index,beta diversity,OTU composition,COG function,and KEGG pathway among the three treatments at the 97% similarity level.No differences in the main phylum microorganisms among the 3 diet treatments and Bacteroidetes,Firmicutes and Proteobacteria accounted for more than 96%.Compared with the CT-CT group,the individual abundance-changing microorganisms in the CC-CC and BT-BT groups did not have negative impact on the cecum microecological balance.The objective of Exp.3 was to investigate the effects of trans-generational feeding transgenic maroACC maize or mCry1 Ac transgenic maize on the cecal mucosal proteomics of offspring hens.The TMT-based proteomic analysis revealed 5433 proteins in Gallus gallus,and the difference proteins were screened according to a multiple of 1.2-fold change in expression fold and P <0.05.More than 99.5% of the protein expression did not change.In conclusion,long-term and trans-generationally feeding transgenic corn line containing the maroACC gene or the mCry1 Ac gene to laying hens and offspring did not adversely affect intestinal development and morphology,cecum microbita and mucosal protein expression.