Microbiome plasticity in chickens provides an attractive target for future potential therapeutic platforms. However, a better understanding of the chicken microbial ecology and how interventions such as xylanase addition can modulate this is needed. Interest in xylanase as an essential additive for livestock in manipulating growth performance has been reported as early as 1980s. In this paper, we describe how a new xylanase leads to an array of benefits in broilers, not only by improving broiler performance and nutrient digestibility, but also by clearly improving gut health. Gut health improvements are demonstrated by better intestinal morphology, different volatile fatty acid profile in the gut and even promotion of beneficial over pathogenic micro-organisms in the intestinal tract. Our study confirms that supplementation of xylanase at the lowest dose of 30,000 U/kg (10 g/t) and above significantly improves broiler performance and digestibility. Furthermore, the observation that xylanase can modulate broilers’ intestinal morphology and microbial content beneficially, by stimulating Lactobacilli growth and thus exerting a prebiotic effect, provides novel and useful insights for future applications.

鸡的微生物组可塑性为未来的潜在治疗平台提供了一个有吸引力的目标。然而，需要更好地了解鸡的微生物生态学以及添加木聚糖酶等干预措施如何调节这一点。早在 1980 年代，就有报道称木聚糖酶是家畜在控制生长性能方面必不可少的添加剂。在本文中，我们描述了一种新的木聚糖酶如何为肉鸡带来一系列益处，不仅可以提高肉鸡的生产性能和营养物质的消化率，还可以明显改善肠道健康。肠道健康的改善通过更好的肠道形态、肠道中不同的挥发性脂肪酸谱，甚至促进肠道中有益于病原微生物的微生物来证明。我们的研究证实，以 30,000 U/kg (10 g/t) 及以上的最低剂量添加木聚糖酶可显着提高肉鸡的生产性能和消化率。此外，观察到木聚糖酶可以有益地调节肉鸡的肠道形态和微生物含量，通过刺激乳酸杆菌生长并因此发挥益生元作用，为未来的应用提供了新颖而有用的见解。