Project description:Weaning is a very critical period for piglets, typically accompanied by lower feed intake, weight loss after weaning and increased mortality. At weaning, piglets are exposed to many stressors, such as loss of mothering, mixing with other litters, end of lactational immunity, and a change in their environment and gut microbiota. After weaning, morphological and histological changes occur in the small intestine of piglets producing a rapid change of feeding regime which is critical for the immature digestive system. Sixteen female piglets were weaned to assess the effect of sorbic acid supplementation on the small intestine tissue transcriptome. At weaning day (T0), 4 piglets were sacrified and tissue samples collected. The remaining 12 piglets were weighted and randomly assigned to different post weaning (T5) diets. Diet A (n=6) contained 5 g/kg of sorbic acid. Diet B (n=6) is the same as Standard diet. Total RNA was isolated from ileum samples to be analyzed using the a CombiMatrix CustomArrayTM 90K platform . Even though diet had no detectable effect during the first 5 days after weaning, outcomes from this study highlighted some of the response mechanisms to the stress of weaning occurring in the piglet gut. A total of 205 differentially expressed genes were used for functional analysis using bioinformatics through BLAST2GO, Ingenuity Pathway Analysis 8.0, and the Dynamic Impact Aproach (DIA). Bioinformatics analysis revealed that Apoptosis, RIG-I-like and NOD-like receptor signaling were altered as a result of weaning. Results suggest that immune and inflammatory responses were activated and likely are a cause of small intestine atrophy as revealed by a decrease in villus height and villus/crypt ratio. Keywords: weaning, gut, gene expression, sorbic acid, microarray analysis
