study of bacterial diversity in poultry gut using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis

bacteria play an important role in the initiation and progression of diseases (not only in disease but affect health status of individual). populations of digestive microflora in chicken gut change with age and also affected by diet, stressors, and performance enhancers as well as in disease conditions. the aim of the pre-sent study was to know bacterial makeup in chicken gut, using denaturing gradient gel electrophore-sis (dgge). dgge results showed 11 different band patterns from the six birds (p1-p6). a total of 11 bands were cloned and sequenced and similarities to known 16s rdna sequences were examined. all the sequences had 93 to 100% similarity to 16s rdna database sequences. in p1 birds, total 8 bands were ob-served; which had varying degree of homology with proteus mirabilis, gallibacterium anatis, uncultured bacterium, bacteroidetes bacterium, rumen bacterium and bacillus subtilis. similarly in second bird (p2), one clone was showing 98% similarities with uncultured bacterium. further one clone from p3 was similar to uncultured prokaryote clone (93%). likewise in p4, one clone was similar (100%) to escherichia spe-cies. moreover, in p5 and p6 birds, dgge bands were having some common migration pattern to those that were observed in other four birds (p1-p4). these results may help poultry producers to develop more cost-effective health management strategies as well as differences in the composition of the gut microbial com-munity with improved performance, which implies that the presence of specific beneficial and / or absence of specific detrimental bacterial species may contribute to the improved performance of the birds.