The effect of baicalin on lung microbiota in chicken
To detect whether the protective role of baicalin in APEC-induced
colibacillosis was associated with the changes of lung microbiota, we
analyzed the lung bacterial community after treated with baicalin alone.
The chao-1 and shannon index showed that there was no difference at both
bacterial diversity and richness between the CON and BAI group chickens
(Fig. 7A-B). In addition, PCoA with unweighted Unifrac distances
indicated that CON and BAI groups were no significantly separated at the
OUT levels (Fig. 7C). Further research showed that Proteobacteria(CON vs BAI=82.36% vs 78.43%), Firmicutes (CON vs BAI=7.78% vs
12.15%), Bacteroidetes (CON vs BAI=5.45% vs 4.91%), andActinobacteria (CON vs BAI=1.24% vs 1.37%) were the dominant
phyla (Fig. 7D and supplementary Table S5), and Stenotrophomonas(CON vs BAI=62.38% vs 56.84%), Delftia (CON vs BAI=3.7% vs
3.9%), Moraxella (CON vs BAI=2.0% vs 4.1%), andSphingomonas (CON vs BAI=4.6% vs 2.9%) genus were the dominant
genus in the lung microbiota of chicken, and there are no different were
showed in CON and BAI group chickens (Fig, 7E and supplementary Table
S6). These results suggested that the protective effect of baicalin on
APEC-induced colibacillosis was associated with the changes of gut
microbiota rather than the changes of lung microbiota.