This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Antimicrobial resistance is a looming threat to global health. As a result, the livestock industry is moving away from using antibiotics in feed to enhance growth. But this shift may have led to increased rates of systemic infections and reduced production efficiency. Alternatives for antibiotic growth promotants (AGPs) are needed, but the mechanism behind the efficiency of AGPs is largely unknown. So, a recent study systematically evaluated the composition and function of the chicken gut microbial community in response to AGPs. The impact of AGPs was dependent on the birds' age and diet as well as the intestinal sampling location. Overall, AGPs had a limited impact on the abundances of specific microbial groups but did shift which groups were influential and exclude others. The chicken gut microbiome functionally responded to AGPs by changing the expression of multiple pathways, including by increasing expression of cell wall formation and antimicrobial resistance mechanism genes..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The gut microbial community, called the gut microbiota, plays an important role in health for both humans and animals. The bacterial members of this community are the most numerous and consequently get the most attention in research. However, there are often overlooked but important fungi, viruses, archaea, and protozoa in the microbiota too. The fungal subset of a microbiota is called the mycobiota, and it is particularly understudied in birds. To close this gap, a recent study comprehensively characterized the mycobiota of chickens bred for meat. While gut bacterial communities typically stabilize with age, the chicken mycobiota was dynamic over time with no clear pattern of successive changes and low overall diversity. The upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract mycobiota was more diverse than the lower tract mycobiota, and just 25 core fungal groups accounted for more than 85% of the fungal population in each section of the GI tract..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Birds can carry and transmit viruses to humans and other animals. Thus, understanding the viral community hosted by birds could help us predict future outbreaks of human disease. A recent metagenomics study took a broad look at the viruses found in the gut of wild and captive birds. The dataset included samples from over 3,000 birds that represented over 87 species and 10 different phylogenetic orders and the researchers characterized genomes from numerous viral families including astroviruses, coronaviruses, parvoviruses, and adenoviruses. Examining trends, they found that wild birds had higher viral diversity than captive birds. There was also evidence of potential cross-species transmission between wild birds and domestic poultry. Further analysis of the viral genomic sequences revealed differences in virus distribution patterns between wild and captive birds. Different phylogenetic orders of birds and geographic sites also had distinct distribution patterns..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

In this lesson, students will investigate the different aspects of the poultry industry. Through a stations activity, they will define poultry terminology, anatomical names, feed calculations, breeds and different types of commercial bird housing. 

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Antibiotics are commonly used as both therapeutics and growth promoters in the poultry industry. Antibiotic use in animal husbandry has been linked to proliferation of antimicrobial resistance, but current evidence is indirect. To examine this problem directly, researchers studied the impact of the growth promoter bacitracin and the therapeutic antibiotic enrofloxacin on microbiomes and resistomes. They sampled both cloacal swabs and litter as proxies of gut and environmentally-disseminated microbiomes, coupling standard isolation and metagenomic methodologies. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria and resistance genes were ubiquitous in both the gut and litter and most of the variation in the microbiomes and resistomes was attributable to either growth stage or sample source. But, bacitracin-fed birds had higher levels of bacitracin resistance genes, and a greater proportion of their Enterococcaceae population was vancomycin-resistant..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"In laying hens, the cecal microbiota is important for digestion and metabolism. However, it also produces hydrogen sulfide gas, an odorous and harmful pollutant that is released in large amounts from poultry houses. Host microRNAs (miRNAs) can regulate the gut microbiota, but whether they affect hydrogen sulfide production in hens is unclear. To clarify this issue, a recent study analyzed the cecal content of two laying hen breeds, Hy-line Gray and Lohmann Pink, with naturally different hydrogen sulfide production. Differential expression of several microbial genes was related to the difference in hydrogen sulfide production between breeds, miRNA-containing exosomes were present in the cecal contents, and the differentially expressed host miRNA gga-miR-222a regulated two of the altered microbial genes encoding methionine synthases. During in vitro fermentation, gga-miR-222a upregulated the two methionine synthase genes..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The relationship between mother and child is special, even down to the microbiome level. Microorganisms that support development and strong immunity are passed to the fetus through the womb and birth canal. But what happens in egg-laying animals? Among birds, close contact after birth appears to be the key to microbiome inheritance. A new study shows that early parental care might even determine chicks' resistance to disease. Researchers compared the gut microbiomes of chicks reared by adult hens and chicks reared separately, as is commonly done in commercial hatcheries. The diversity of gut microbes was higher in hen-reared chicks (HR) than in separately reared chicks (SR), and when exposed to the avian flu virus H9N2, hen-reared chicks (HR) showed shorter durations of viral infection and more stable gut microbiotas after infection..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"In poultry, environmental stress can cause changes in the microbiome of the gastrointestinal tract that are associated with increased disease susceptibility. One route by which environmental stress can affect the microbiome is through neuroendocrine-driven host-microbiome interactions in the gut, a field of study called Microbial Endocrinology. Unfortunately, few studies have examined neuroendocrine changes in the avian gut following stress and how this may associate with the microbiome. A recent study uses a new microbial endocrinology-based framework to better understand the neuroendocrine interactions behind the avian host-microbiome relationship. Microbial endocrinology lies at the intersection of microbiology and neurobiology, seeking to uncover how microbes and host biology affect each other through bi-directional neuroendocrine interactions..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.