Assessing the relationship between the gut microbiota and growth traits in Chinese indigenous pig breeds

Gut microbiota plays crucial roles in host metabolism, diseases and development. It has also been reported to be associated with growth performance in pigs. However, the bacterial species influencing pig growth performance have not been isolated, and the mechanisms remain unclear.

In this study, we collected 500 gut microbial samples from two Chinese indigenous pig breeds, including 244 fecal samples from Bamaxiang (BMX) pigs and 256 cecum content samples from Erhualian (EHL) pigs, to investigate the relationship between gut microbiota and pig growth traits. Bacterial compositions were determined by 16 S rRNA gene sequencing, and association analysis was performed using a two-part model. We found that the Firmicutes-to-Bacteroidota ratio in fecal samples from BMX pigs was negatively associated with average daily gain (P = 0.0085). Amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) belonging to Prevotella and three ASVs annotated to Oscillospiraceae were negatively associated with pig growth traits, while ASVs annotated to Muribaculaceae and Rikenellaceae showed positive correlations with growth traits in BMX fecal samples. In cecum content samples from EHL pigs, ASVs belonging to Prevotella, Lactobacillus delbrueckii, and Lachnospiraceae were negatively associated with growth performance, whereas one ASV belonging to Rikenellaceae demonstrated a positive association. Predicted functional capacity analysis revealed that metabolic pathways related to the digestive system, glycan biosynthesis and metabolism, signaling molecules and interactions, and xenobiotics biodegradation and metabolism were positively associated with pig growth traits. Conversely, the excretory system pathway showed a negative correlation. These pathways were found to correlate with growth trait-associated bacterial ASVs, suggesting that alterations in gut bacterial composition led to functional capacity shifts in the gut microbiome, subsequently affecting porcine growth.

Our results gave significant insights about the effect of gut microbiota on pig growth and provided important evidence to support further isolation of bacterial taxa that influence pig growth for elucidating their mechanisms.