Table 1.
Nutrient composition of the basal starter, grower and finisher diets.
Table 2.
Real-time quantitative RT-PCR primers for the chicken pro and anti-inflammatory cytokines.
Table 3.
Bird performance (BW. BWG, FI and FCR) for BMD-fed and no BMD-fed group birds at different ages.
Table 4.
Volatile acid production in the cecum in BMD-fed and no BMD-fed group birds at different ages.
Fig 1.
Changes in microbial community species diversity and OTUs in ceca (A, B) and ilea (C, D). Boxes represent the interquartile range (IQR) between the first and third quartiles (25th and 75th percentiles, respectively) and the horizontal line inside the box defines the media. Whiskers represent the lowest and highest values within 1.5 times the IQR from the first and third quartiles, respectively.
Table 5.
Permutational ANOVA results partitioning effect of bird age, treatments and diet on microbial community composition of the cecum and ileum as calculated at a 97% cutoff as described in the text.
Fig 2.
Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) shows weighted (based on abundance; A-C) and unweighted (based on presence/ absence; D-F) pairwise UniFrac distances between samples of cecum microbial community with respect of age (d0, 7, 14, 22, 35 and 42), treatment (BMD-supplemented and BMD-free (control) and diet (no diet: d0 birds fed no diet, starter (fed from d0-22), grower (d23-d35) and finisher (d35-42).
Fig 3.
Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) based show weighted (based on abundance; A-C) and unweighted (based on presence/ absence; D-F) pairwise UniFrac distances between samples of ileum microbial community with respect of age (d0, 7, 14, 22, 35 and 42), treatment (BMD-supplemented and BMD-free (control) and diet (no diet: d0 birds fed no diet, starter (fed from d0-22), grower (d23-d35) and finisher (d35-42).
Fig 4.
Phylogenetic composition of (A) cecal microbial community and (B) ileal microbial community fed on BMD-diet and BMD-free diet (control group) across all ages (d0, 7, 14, 22, 35 and 42).
Fig 5.
Heatmap of taxonomic groups present in the cecum of birds fed on BMD-diet and BMD-free diet (control group) across all ages (d0, 7, 14, 22, 35 and 42).
The sample numbers (n = 6 for each time point) in red are of control diet and blue are of BMD diet.
Fig 6.
Heatmap of taxonomic groups present in the ileum of birds fed on BMD-diet and BMD-free diet (control group) across all ages (d0, 7, 14, 22, 35 and 42).
The sample numbers (n = 6 for each time point) in red are of control diet and blue are of BMD diet.
Fig 7.
Change in cytokine gene expression (A) β-defensin (B) TLR-4 (C) IL-10 (D) IL-4 and (E) IFN-α in the ceca. Values are represented as means ± standard error of mean, where n = 4.
Fig 8.
Change in cytokine gene expression (A) β-defensin (B) TLR-4 (C) IL-10 (D) IL-4 and (E) IFN-α in the ilea. Values are represented as means ± standard error of mean, where n = 4.
Fig 9.
Prevalence of food borne pathogens in cecum, ileum, litter and feed collected at different time points (d0, 7, 14, 22, 35, 42) from BMD-free and BMD supplemented groups.
(A) Prevalence (in %) of Salmonella and (B) Prevalence (in %) of Campylobacter.