Novel strategies to improve chicken performance and welfare by unveiling host-microbiota interactions through hologenomics

Núria Tous, Sofia Marcos, Farshad Goodarzi Boroojeni, Ana Pérez de Rozas, Jürgen Zentek, Andone Estonba, Dorthe Sandvang, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Enric Esteve-Garcia, Robert Finn, Antton Alberdi*, Joan Tarradas

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)
19 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Fast optimisation of farming practices is essential to meet environmental sustainability challenges. Hologenomics, the joint study of the genomic features of animals and the microbial communities associated with them, opens new avenues to obtain in-depth knowledge on how host-microbiota interactions affect animal performance and welfare, and in doing so, improve the quality and sustainability of animal production. Here, we introduce the animal trials conducted with broiler chickens in the H2020 project HoloFood, and our strategy to implement hologenomic analyses in light of the initial results, which despite yielding negligible effects of tested feed additives, provide relevant information to understand how host genomic features, microbiota development dynamics and host-microbiota interactions shape animal welfare and performance. We report the most relevant results, propose hypotheses to explain the observed patterns, and outline how these questions will be addressed through the generation and analysis of animal-microbiota multi-omic data during the HoloFood project.

Original languageEnglish
Article number884925
JournalFrontiers in Physiology
Volume13
Number of pages14
ISSN1664-042X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2022 Tous, Marcos, Goodarzi Boroojeni, Pérez de Rozas, Zentek, Estonba, Sandvang, Gilbert, Esteve-Garcia, Finn, Alberdi and Tarradas.

Keywords

  • animal performance
  • genomics
  • metagenomics
  • multi-omics
  • sustainability

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