Caecal Microbiome Transplant:a novel approach to Campylobacter control and improving broiler chicken gut heath.

现代肉鸡（或产肉鸡）是科学和选择性育种的应用如何建立高效且可持续的系统来生产廉价且营养的食品的最佳例子之一。然而，这是有代价的。现代杂交肉鸡品种有许多健康和福利问题，包括肠道健康状况不佳，可能导致由于水样粪便而被称为“湿垃圾”的问题。反过来，鸟类站在潮湿的垃圾上，导致皮肤烧伤和刺激，影响它们的福利。几种可能导致食物中毒的细菌也可以在肉鸡的肠道中生存和复制，并可以在粪便中脱落，导致这些细菌的快速传播，包括弯曲杆菌和沙门氏菌，通过鸡群进入人类食物链。了解鸡如何保持肠道健康，以及它如何与致病细菌和肠道中自然存在的细菌相互作用（微生物）在改善这些动物的福利和寻找控制致病细菌或病原体的方法方面非常重要。近年来，肠道微生物组在健康和疾病中的重要性变得越来越明显，不仅仅是肠道健康，还有肥胖和心理健康等不同领域。这项研究的一个特别重要的领域是粪便微生物群移植，也称为粪便或粪便移植。正如它所暗示的，这涉及将粪便材料从健康捐赠者转移到患有医院获得性感染的患者，艰难梭菌。这种方法非常成功，并已在实验中应用于其他肠道疾病，甚至影响神经系统的疾病。在这个项目中，我们建议将健康的微生物组从老鸡转移到新孵化的小鸡身上。在现代鸡生产中，小鸡与它们的母亲没有接触，而母亲是哺乳动物微生物组的主要来源。因此，他们直到晚年才发展出“鸡”微生物组。我们认为这既导致了肉鸡肠道健康状况不佳，也导致了它们对弯曲杆菌感染的易感性。我们在最初的实验中已经表明，从8周龄健康鸟类转移肠道（盲肠）内容物可以改善雏鸡的肠道健康，但更显著的是，在实验感染中降低了鸡肠道中弯曲杆菌的水平，并阻止了这种细菌在鸟类之间的传播。我们相信这可以发展成为一个有效的控制弯曲杆菌。在该项目中，我们的目标是做以下1。了解移植如何改变微生物群并影响免疫系统2。显示微生物组和免疫系统的哪些变化对降低感染易感性很重要3。进一步发展移植技术，并评估是否可以采用向鸡只提供活疫苗的方法来提供移植在本项目中，我们建议充分发展盲肠微生物组移植，以吸引工业合作伙伴，从而成为一种产品，可以帮助改善世界上每年饲养的数十亿只鸡的健康状况，并降低弯曲杆菌的水平，弯曲杆菌导致超过50万例感染。英格兰和威尔士每年都发生肠胃炎。

The modern broiler (or meat-producing) chicken is one of the best examples of how the appliance of science and selective breeding can lead to an efficient and sustainable system to produce cheap and nutritious food. However this comes at a cost. The modern hybrid broiler breed has a number of health and welfare problems including poor gut health than can lead to a problem known as 'wet litter' due to watery faeces. In turn birds stand on the wet litter leading to skin burns and irritation that affect their welfare. Several types of bacteria that can cause food poisoning can also live and replicate in the intestines of broiler chickens and can be shed in the faeces leading to rapid spread of these bacteria, including Campylobacter and Salmonella, though chicken flocks and on to the human food chain. Understanding how the chicken keeps its intestines healthy and how it interacts both with disease-causing bacteria and the bacteria that naturally occur in the gut (the microbiota) are important in improving welfare of these animals and in finding ways we can control the disease-causing bacteria or pathogens.In recent years the importance of the gut microbiome in heath and disease has become increasingly apparent, not just on the health of the gut but on areas as diverse as obesity and mental health. One area of this research with a particularly strong profile is in Faecal Microbiota Transplant also called more simply a faecal or stool transplant. As it suggests this involves transfer faecal material from a health donor to patients with the hospital-acquired infection, Clostridium difficle. The approach has been very successful and has been applied experimental to other intestinal diseases and even to conditions affecting the nervous system. In this project we propose to transfer the healthy microbiome from older chickens to newly hatched chicks. In modern chicken production chicks have no contact with their mothers, the main source of the microbiome in mammals. As such they do not develop a 'chicken' microbiome until later in life. We believe this contributes both to the poor gut health of broiler chickens and to their susceptibility to Campylobacter infection. We have shown in initial experiments that transfer of the intestinal (caecal) content from an 8-week old healthy bird improves the gut health of the chicks but more significantly both reduces the levels of Campylobacter in the chicken gut in experimental infection and hinders this bacteria spreading from bird-to bird. We believe that this can be developed as an effective control for Campylobacter.In the project we aim to do the following1. Understanding how the transplant modifies the microbiota and affects the immune system2. Show which changes to the microbiome and immune system are important in reducing susceptibility to infection3. Further develop the transplant technology and assess if methods used to deliver live vaccines to chicks can be adopted to deliver a transplantIn this project we propose develop the caecal microbiome transplant sufficiently to attract industrial partners to take forward to becoming a product that can help improving the health of billions of chickens reared annually in the world and reduce the levels of Campylobacter which cause over half a million cases of gastroenteritis in England and Wales each year.