Effect of feeding Lactobacillus plantarum P-8 on the faecal microbiota of broiler chickens exposed to lincomycin

Poultry and eggs are nutritious and healthy foods that contain high-quality proteins and low levels of fat compared with other meats. Recent studies have shown that poultry performance is closely associated with colonic health. Antibiotics are commonly used in the poultry industry to control diseases and enhance survival rates. However, antibiotic use can also result in host gut dysbiosis and immune dysregulation. Such imbalances compromise poultry health and growth performance. Thus, our study investigated the effect of Lactobacillus (L.) plantarum P-8 on the gut microbiome of chickens co-inoculated with the antibiotic lincomycin. Principal coordinate analysis showed that L. plantarum P-8 treatment shifted the faecal bacterial population structure. At the metagenomic level, the Clusters of Orthologous Groups (COGs) functional categories of P, C, N and A were overrepresented in the probiotic group. Additionally, the relative gene abundances of metabolic pathways involved in flagellar assembly, bacterial chemotaxis, nitrogen metabolism, sulfur metabolism, cofactor and vitamin biosynthesis were also higher in the probiotic group than the control; in contrast genes related to galactose degradation, carbon fixation, multiple sugar transport systems and ribosomes were underrepresented in the probiotic group. Our data suggest that feeding L. plantarum P-8 has the potential to improve metabolic activity and nutrient utilization of poultry. Furthermore, the faecal antibiotic resistomes of the two groups could be separated using principal components analysis, indicating that the probiotic treatment may modulate the intestinal antibiotic resistance gene pool by changing the population structure of the gut microbiota. This study has provided interesting insights into the application of probiotics in the poultry industry.