Biosynthetic reuterin improved the intestinal health in pigs

This experiment aimed to study the effects of dietary supplementation with biosynthetic reuterin (RT) from Escherichia coli cells on the growth performance and intestinal health of pigs. A total of 72 pigs (Duroc × Landrace × Yorkshire, 21 d old, 5.7 ± 0.3 kg weight) were randomly divided into basal diet group (CON), basal diet supplemented with 5 × 10¹⁰ colony-forming unit (CFU)/kg Lactobacillus reuteri group (LR), and basal diet supplemented with 50 mg/kg reuterin group (RT) with 6 pens (4 pigs per pen) per group for a 14-d period. One piglet was randomly selected from each pen on the 15th d for sampling. The results showed that the addition of RT to the diet significantly improved the growth performance of piglets, specifically increasing average daily gain (ADG; P = 0.004), and reduced diarrhea rate (P = 0.012), improved the intestinal morphology by significantly increasing villus height and the villus height to crypt depth ratio (P < 0.05), and enhanced intestinal barrier and immune functions by upregulating the expression of related genes (ZO1, MUC1, pBD2, and PR39; P < 0.05). Simultaneously, RT upregulated TLR gene expression and activated the MAPK signaling pathway (P < 0.05). Combined analysis of microbiome and non-targeted metabolomics showed that RT improved metabolism by affecting the relative abundance of Phascolarctobacterium succinatutens YIT12067 (known for succinate production and impacting energy metabolism) and Holdemanella (implicated in carbohydrate metabolism and immune modulation) in pigs (P < 0.05). In addition, RT significantly reduced the deposition of intestinal collagen (P < 0.05). In conclusion, this study demonstrated that biosynthetic RT effectively improved the growth and intestinal health of pigs, which may provide some theoretical basis for the RT production as a feed additive.