Andres Gomez, Assistant Professor - Microbiomes, and
Chloe Creager, Graduate Student
Department of Animal Science; Department of Food Science and Nutrition
University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN
The trillions of microbes that inhabit the gastrointestinal tract of mammals, the gut microbiome, play indispensable roles in energy harvest, nutrient synthesis and gut health. In fact, virtually all diet-derived compounds have a direct or indirect effect on the gut microbiome, significantly impacting host physiological performance at organismal and systemic levels. Although these issues have been well-known in the animal science field, microbiome work in swine production systems is still in its infancy, compared with the breakthroughs achieved in the biomedical and human nutrition sciences. More importantly, we still lack foundational perspectives of microbiome manipulation to potentially improve pig performance and health. Taking into account the latest advances on molecular biology and data science, and making a parallel with the human microbiome field, I discuss critical research directions that will allow us to maximize the information derived from microbiome techniques to advance swine nutrition and production; mainly, I emphasize on 1) the need of funding large-scale, hypothesis generating microbiome data in swine production systems; 2) moving from compositional to functional surveys of the gut microbiome of swine; 3) studying the swine gut microbiome as one part of a highly integrated and complex animal system; and 4) implementing mechanistic models to understand the structure and function of the swine gut microbiome. By presenting these perspectives, I show how microbiome research is a critical aspect to advance the swine nutrition field, in the context of efficiency and sustainability.