Associations of Gut Microbiota With Heat Stress-Induced Changes of Growth, Fat Deposition, Intestinal Morphology, and Antioxidant Capacity in Ducks

Conclusion The impacts of HS on gut microbiota community and their possible relationships with the physiological changes in Cherry-Valley ducks were investigated. The results showed that the significant microbiota compositional differences occurred in jejunum and cecum under HS, accompanied by the changes of weight gain, fat content, intestinal morphology, and oxidative indices. By Spearman correlation analysis, significant associations were found between microbiota alteration and these parameters in jejunum, but not in cecum. These data indicated that HS induced intestinal injuries, abnormal fat deposition, and reductions of growth performances and antioxidant capacity in duck, which probably have potential relationships with the gut microbiota dysbiosis. Ethics Statement This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Guidelines for Experimental Animals established by the Ministry of Science and Technology (Beijing, China). The protocol was approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Ningbo University (Ningbo, China). Author Contributions DP and JC conceived of and designed the experiments. YH performed the sampling and serum index measurement. YS wrote the tissue section. XZ and JH performed the 16S rRNA sequencing experiments. JH, DP, and JC analyzed the data. JH wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to refining the text and approved the submitted version. Funding This work was supported by National Natural Scienc...
Source: Frontiers in Microbiology - Category: Microbiology Source Type: research