Changes in the gut microbiota of cloned and non-cloned control pigs during development of obesity: gut microbiota during development of obesity in cloned pigs - DTU Orbit (18/06/2017)

obesity: gut microbiota during development of obesity in cloned pigs DTU Orbit (18/06/2017) Changes in the gut microbiota of cloned and non-cloned control pigs during development of obesity: gut microbiota during development of obesity in cloned pigs Background Obesity induced by a high-caloric diet has previously been associated with changes in the gut microbiota in mice and in humans. In this study, pigs were cloned to minimize genetic and biological variation among the animals with the aim of developing a controlled metabolomic model suitable for a diet-intervention study. Cloning of pigs may be an attractive way to reduce genetic influences when investigating the effect of diet and obesity on different physiological sites. The aim of this study was to assess and compare the changes in the composition of the gut microbiota of cloned vs. non-cloned pigs during development of obesity by a high-fat/high-caloric diet. Furthermore, we investigated the association between dietinduced obesity and the relative abundance of the phyla Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes in the fecal-microbiota. The fecal microbiota from obese cloned (n = 5) and non-cloned control pigs (n= 6) was investigated biweekly over a period of 136 days, by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and quantitative real time PCR (qPCR).