Affiliation:
1. College of Veterinary Medicine, Xinjiang Agricultural University, Urumqi, China
2. Institute for Quality & Safety and Standards of Agricultural Products Research, Jiangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Nanchang, China
3. Institute of Veterinary Medicine, Xinjiang Academy of Animal Science Animal Medical Research Center, Urumqi, China
4. Animal Disease Control and Diagnosis Center of Altay Region, Xinjiang, China
5. Technology Talent Development Center of The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Urumqi, China
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Tail fat deposition of Altay sheep not only increased the cost of feeding but also reduced the economic value of meat. Currently, because artificial tail removal and gene modification methods cannot solve this problem, it is maybe to consider reducing tail fat deposition from the path of intestinal microbiota and metabolite. We measured body weight and tail fat weight, collected the serum for hormone detection by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and collected colon contents to 16S rRNA sequence and liquid chromotography with mass spectrometry detection to obtain colon microbiota and metabolite information, from 12 3-month-old and 6-month-old Altay sheep. Subsequently, we analyzed the correlation between colon microbiota and tail fat weight, hormones, and metabolites, respectively. We identified that the tail fat deposition of Altay sheep increased significantly with the increase of age and body weight, and the main microbiota that changed were Verrucomicrobia, Cyanobacteria,
Akkermansia
,
Bacteroides
,
Phocaeicola
,
Escherichia-Shigella
, and
Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1
. The results indicated that the diversities of metabolites in the colon contents of 3-months old and 6-months old were mainly reflected in phosphocholine (PC) and phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) in the lipid metabolism pathway. The correlations analyzed showed that Verrucomicrobia, Chlamydiae,
Akkermansia
,
Ruminococcaceae_UCG-005
,
Bacteroides
, and
Phocaeicola
were negatively correlated with tail fat deposition. Verrucomicrobia,
Akkermansia
, and
Bacteroides
were negatively correlated with growth hormone (GH). Verrucomicrobia was positively correlated with L-a-lysophosphatidylserine and PE(18:1(9Z)/0:0). Our results showed that tail fat deposition of Altay sheep was probably correlated with the abundance of Verrucomicrobia,
Akkermansia
,
Bacteroides
of colon microbiota, PC, PE of metabolites, and GH of serum.
IMPORTANCE
Excessive tail fat deposition of Altay sheep caused great economic losses, and the current research results could not solve this problem well. Now, our research speculates that the tail fat deposition of Aletay sheep may be related to the abundance of Verrucomicrobia, Akkermansia, Bacteroides, metabolites phosphocholine, phosphatidylethanolamine, and growth hormone of serum. Further investigation of the interaction mechanism between these microbiota or metabolites and tail fat deposition is helpful in reducing tail fat deposition of Altay sheep and increasing the economic benefits of breeding farms.
Funder
MOST | National Natural Science Foundation of China
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology