Effects of ribavirin intervention on intestinal microbial community structure in broilers

【Objective】The structural diversity of the intestinal microbiological community in dwarf yellow chicken after oral ribavirin was discussed, the mechanism of the effects of antiviral drugs on animal intestinal health was revealed, and provided theoretical basis for scientific prohibition on the addition of antibiotics and the development of green ecological feed.【Method】Dwarf yellow chicken at 90 d were selected as experimental animal, and took ribavirin orally for 7 consecutive d according to the body weight dose of 10 mg/kg(treatment group), the same amount of normal saline was taken orally as control group. Manure samples were collected within 4 h after the drug stopped.The total chicken manure DNA was extracted from the fecal genome extraction kit, according to bacterial 16S rDNA sequence V3-V4 variable region, common primers 338F and 806R were designed for PCR amplification, then conducted Illumina MiSeq highthroughput sequencing with reference to the on-board Illumina MiSeq platform instructions.【Result】In total, 614626 raw reads were obtained for the bacterial 16S rRNA genes analysis. After screening these gene sequences with strict criteria, 606862 clean reads were obtained. OTU cluster analysis based on 97% sequence similarity obtained 968 OTUs. Additionally, there were 624 OTUs shared between the groups. The intestinal microbiological community richness indexes(Chao1 and ACE) in the control group were significant(P<0.05, the same below) or extremely significant(P<0.01, the same below) higher than in the treatment group. In species diversity, the Simpson index was not significant between groups(P>0.05), Shannon index in control group was significantly higher compared to treatment group. At the phylum level, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria were the dominant phyla in both groups, with average relative abundance above 5.00%. At the genus level, there were 108 genera accounted for more than 0.10% relative abundance, and Lactobacillus accounted for the highest relative abundance in the control group and the treatment group, which were 34.07% and 19.26% respectively. After oral administration of ribavirin, Lactobacillus, Enterococcus, Paeniglutamicibacter, Tessaracoccus, Escherichia, Paracoccus, Gottschalkia and Flavobacterium significantly or extremely decreased, while Bacteroides, Staphylococcus, Methylosarcina, Jeotgalicoccus、Unclassified_f_rikenellaceae、Unclassifier_o_bacteroidales、Rikenellaceae_RC9_gut_group, Leuconostoc and Erysipelothrix significantly or extremely increased. The UniFrac-PCoA weighted principal coordinate analysis found that the primary component(PC1) and secondary component (PC2) contributed 73.44% and 6.99%, respectively. The microbial community structure difference between the control group and the treatment group was obvious, which could be better separated from each other, but the 8 samples in the treatment group could be well gathered together, and the flora similarity was very high.【Conclusion】Oral administration of ribavirin can significantly affect the intestinal microflora of dwarf yellow chicken, and change the steady-state structure of the intestinal microorganisms, which can cause the impaired of the intestinal health.