Life-long dynamics of the swine gut microbiome and their implications in probiotics development and food safety

ABSTRACT

The swine gut microbiome has received remarkable attention in recent years given that pigs serve not only as important sources for animal-derived food but also as excellent biomedical models for human health. However, despite recent advances in the understanding of the swine gut microbiome, many important biological and ecological questions are still largely unanswered. In a recent study, we characterized the life-long dynamics of the swine gut microbiome from birth to market. We showed distinct shifts in gut microbiome structure along different growth stages mainly driven by diet. Here, we summarize these discoveries and provide additional data related to the core swine gut microbiome, probiotics development in the swine industry, and foodborne pathogens in the pork supply chain.

KEYWORDS:

• Swine gut microbiome
• probiotics
• core microbiome
• food safety

Acknowledgments

We deeply appreciate Dr. Marites A. Sales’ help with proofreading and editing of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture [2018-67015-27479] to JZ and the National Natural Science Foundation of China [31630074] to JW.