Cecal Microbiota in Broilers Fed with Prebiotics

Prebiotics are typically fibrous compounds that pass undigested through the upper part of the gastrointestinal tract and stimulate the growth or activity of advantageous bacteria that colonize the bowel and contribute to the well-being of their host (Gibson and Roberfroid, 1995). Some of the most widely used prebiotics in the poultry industry are fructo-oligosaccharides, mannan-oligosaccharides, galacto-oligosaccharides and beta-glucans (Huyghebaert et al., 2011). Selective fermentation of some prebiotics has been shown to induce changes in the composition and/or activity of the gastrointestinal microbiota, improving the health of the host (Gibson et al., 2004). Zhenping et al. (2013) showed increased growth performance, enhanced endocrine metabolism, and improved immune function in broiler chickens after in-feed supplementation with xylo-oligosaccharides prebiotics. Moreover, changes in enteric bacteria in the cecum (Spring et al., 2000) and improved intestinal morphology have been observed in broilers fed with dietary mannan-oligosaccharide (Baurhoo et al., 2009). Because the microbiota can be modified (Khoruts et al., 2010; Borody and Khoruts, 2012) it constitutes an attractive target for therapeutic manipulation. However, successful outcome of such manipulations require a better understanding of the interactions between the host and its microbiota (Hamilton et al., 2013; Van Nood et al., 2013). The composition and diversity of chicken intestinal microbiota were previously investigated using cultivation-based methodologies (Fernandez et al., 2002; Cross et al., 2007). However, the use of DNA-based molecular biology techniques, such as metagenomics and new generation DNA sequencing, allowed new opportunities to characterize uncultivable members of intestinal microbiota (Gong et al., 2002) shedding light on the composition and temporal spatial location of the microbial population in broiler’s intestine. Nevertheless, the knowledge of the structure, interactions and functions of the intestinal microbiota is still limited and fragmented (Oakley and Kogut, 2016). In this work the effect of dietary supplement with prebiotics derived from yeast wall (mannan-oligosaccharide and nucleotide) on the cecal microbiota of broilers was evaluated by the massive parallel sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene.