The fungal community and its interaction with the concentration of short‐chain fatty acids in the faeces of Chenghua, Yorkshire and Tibetan pigs

Abstract

Summary Despite their important roles in host nutrition and metabolism, and potential to cause disease, our knowledge of the fungal community in the mammalian gut is quite limited. To date, diversity and composition of fungi in swine gut still remains unknown. Therefore, the first internal transcribed spacer of fungi in faecal samples from three breeds of pigs (10 pigs for each breed) was sequenced based on an Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform, and the relationship between the fungal community and the concentrations of main short‐chain fatty acids (SCFAs) was also analysed. Results indicated that Chenghua (local, higher body fat rate), Yorkshire (foreign, higher lean meat and growth rate) and Tibetan (plateau, stronger disease resistance) pigs harboured distinct fungal community. The Basidiomycota and Ascomycota presented as the two predominant phyla, with Loreleia, Russula and Candida as the top three genera in all samples. Network analysis revealed a total of 35 correlations among different fungal genera, with 27 (77.14%) positive and 8 (22.86%) negative pairwise interactions. Canonical correspondence analysis suggested that fungi in the faeces of pigs were more correlated to the concentration of acetate and butyrate rather than propionate. Spearman’s correlation further showed that Tomentella was positively correlated to both acetate and butyrate, and Loreleia was positively correlated to propionate (P < 0.05), while Nephroma and Taiwanofungus were negatively correlated to acetate and propionate (P < 0.05). These findings expanded our knowledge on the intestinal fungi in pigs with different genotypes and phenotypes, indicating that fungi may play an indispensable role during the metabolism of host and the maintenance of intestinal health. The cross‐feeding between fungi and other microorganisms may be crucial during the digestion of dietary carbohydrates and the associated physiological processes, which is worthy to be further studied.

Intestinal mycobiota in health and diseases: from a disrupted equilibrium to clinical opportunities

“…For example, diet with high amounts of fat decreases S. cerevisiae abundance in the gut of mice [1]. The abundance of Metschnikowia, Tomentella, and Loreleia correlates with short chain fat acids (SCFAs) in pigs [44], and SCFAs are negatively associated with the intestinal abundance of Aspergillus in human [45]. Moreover, carbohydrate-rich diet correlates positively with the abundance of gut Candida [46].…”

“…Therefore, to some extent, gut Species Gut Candida spp. only found in mammalian [44,49] Chenghua, Yorkshire, and Tibetan pigs have different fungal abundance "↑" indicates increase and "↓" indicates decrease mycobiota probably varies by species or genotypes [44].…”

“…The environment also affects host's exposure to the potential pathogenic or non-pathogenic microorganisms [43]. Moreover, different breeds always have different genetic background, not to mention food available to them [44]. Because offspring at 10 days and 3 months are almost exclusively breast-fed, their gut mycobiota are dominated by Debaryomyces hansenii from breast milk [35].…”

Genome-wide DNA methylation analysis in Chinese Chenghua and Yorkshire pigs

“…Yorkshire pig (YP) is an important commercial pig breed with a high growth rate and lean meat [ 10 ]. Chenghua pig (CHP) is a Chinese local breed which is famous for superior meat quality [ 11 ]. By contrast, there are significant differences in body composition, muscle, and fat content between Chinese local pigs and commercial pigs [ 12 ], especially between CHP and YP [ 13 ].…”

Diet Induces the Difference of Gut Fungal Communities between Anser erythropus Wintering at Shengjin and Caizi Lakes, China

“…The fungal population only makes up at most 0.1% of the microorganisms in the gut, and the role of them has been ignored in the past decades, however, recently several studies indicated that fungi might be contribute to the metabolism and intestinal health, include provisioning of essential amino acids, contributing to lignocellulose degradation and increasing nutrition levels for their hosts [4,[10][11]. However, due to the relatively lower abundance and lack of well-characterised reference genome data, fungi are largely unexplored in animal [11][12][13]. Nevertheless, among Aves, gut fungi research has mainly focused on poultry and pet birds, as a result, the knowledge of their contributions to birds is limited.…”