Egg-laying rate is a crucial economic trait that significantly contributes to the poultry industry. Compelling evidence has clearly demonstrated that gut microbiota is closely associated with production performance in chickens. Given that suboptimal egg production performance has become one of the bottlenecks constraining the development of the indigenous layer industry in China, the present study aimed to systematically compare the fecal microbiome and metabolome data from high-yielding (HR) and low-yielding (LR) Tianfu powder-shell laying hens, and further evaluate the potential interactions between microbes and metabolites. Our results revealed that fecal microbiota diversity and composition in HR chickens were significantly different from those in LR chickens. Moreover, Lactobacillus, Bacillus, and Bacteroides were highly enriched in HR chickens and exhibited a significantly positive correlation with laying rate. In contrast, Romboutsia and Aerococcus were more abundant in LR chickens, and Aerococcus was significantly negatively correlated with laying rate. The KEGG pathway enrichment analysis suggested that the fecal microbiota of HR chickens was mainly enriched in phosphotransferase system, glycerophospholipid metabolism, and amino sugar metabolism. Through untargeted metabolomics analysis, we observed that the abundances of L-glutamic acid, L-threonine, L-valine, curcumin, fumaric acid, and L-glutamine were obviously higher in HR chickens and were significantly positively correlated with laying rate. Furthermore, the correlation analysis revealed that the abundances of Akkermansia, Bacteroides, ChristensenellaceaeR-7 group, and Parabacteroides were positively correlated with most of the identified key metabolites. These findings offer a promising strategy to manipulate the gut microbiota and metabolites, ultimately improving egg production in the poultry industry.
Su et al. (Wed,) studied this question.