Inter-correlated gut microbiota and SCFAs changes upon antibiotics exposure links with rapid body-mass gain in weaned piglet model.

The risk of overweight or obesity in association with early exposure of antibiotics remains an important public issue for health-care of children. Low-dose antibiotics (LDA) have been widely used to enhance growth rate of pigs, providing a good animal model to study the underlying mechanism. In present study, 28 female piglets, weaned at 21 d, were randomly classified into two groups, receiving either a control diet or a diet supplemented with LDA for 4 weeks. The total bacterial load and intestinal microbiota were determined by qPCR and 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. UPLC-QTRAP-MS/MS and RNA-seq were further used to determine the colonic SCFAs and transcriptomes. Results showed that LDA significantly increased growth rate and food intake. The F/B index, Methanosphaera species, and the pathway of "carbohydrate metabolism" were improved by LDA exposure, indicating the better carbohydrate degradation and energy utilization. Furthermore, correlation analysis indicated the microbial community contributing to SCFAs production was enriched upon LDA exposure, associating with increased concentrations of short-chain and branched-chain fatty acids (caproate, 2-methyl butyrate and 4-methyl valerate). A multivariate linear fitting model analysis highlighted that caproate was positively correlated with two genera (Faecalibacterium and Allisonella) and four differentially expressed genes (ZNF134, TBX5, NEU4 and SEMA6D), which were all significantly increased upon LDA exposure. Collectively, our study indicates that the growth-promoting effect of LDA exposure in early life is associated with the shifts of colonic microbiota to increase utilization of carbohydrates and energy, enhanced SCFAs production and colonic functions.