Project description:Poultry litter and the environment: Microbial properties of litter during successive flock rotations and after spreading on pastureland
Project description:Salmonella being one of the major infectious diseases in poultry causes considerable economical losses in terms of mortality and morbidity especially in countries which lack effective vaccination programs. Salmonellosis is considered to be most important zoonotic disease which causes considerable foodborne illness that leads to enormous economic loses. To minimize such losses, enhancing disease resistance to different pathogens seems to be a promising strategy. The indigenous chicken, evolved through thousands of years of natural selection, are well adapted to the local climatic conditions with better resistance to diseases. In the present study we investigated liver and spleen transcriptome profile of indigenous (Kashmir faverolla) breed and commercial broiler poultry at day 5 post-inoculation with Salmonella typhimurium using RNA sequencing. The DEGs and pathways identified shall provide potential targets to enhance disease resistance in poultry through successful breeding programmes.
Project description:<p>Microbial life in soil is fueled by dissolved organic matter (DOM) that leaches from the litter layer. It is well known that decomposer communities adapt to the available litter source, but it remains unclear if they functionally compete or synergistically address different litter types. Therefore, we decomposed beech, oak, pine and grass litter from two geologically distinct sites in a lab-scale decomposition experiment. We performed a correlative network analysis on the results of direct infusion HR-MS DOM analysis and cross-validated functional predictions from 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and with DOM and metaproteomic analyses. Here we show that many functions are redundantly distributed within decomposer communities and that their relative expression is rapidly optimized to address litter-specific properties. However, community changes are likely forced by antagonistic mechanisms as we identified several natural antibiotics in DOM. As a consequence, the decomposer community is specializing towards the litter source and the state of decomposition (community divergence) but showing similar litter metabolomes (metabolome convergence). Our multi-omics-based results highlight that DOM not only fuels microbial life, but it additionally holds meta-metabolomic information on the functioning of ecosystems.</p>
Project description:Chickens are remarkably versatile animals that are used as model organisms for biomedical research. Here, we performed metabolomic analyses of the liver tissue and serum of poultry with different genetic backgrounds, providing detailed information for liver tissue and serum at the metabolite level. The metabolomic data obtained for poultry of different genetic backgrounds will be a valuable resource for further studies on this model organism.