Acta Veterinaria et Zootechnica Sinica ›› 2025, Vol. 56 ›› Issue (1): 63-73.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2025.01.006

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Research Progress of Gastrointestinal Symbiotic Fungi in Livestock and Poultry

CHANG Xuan(), WEI Bingni, ZHANG Xiaoli, ZHAO Zhongquan, CHEN Juncai*()   

  1. College of Animal Science and Technology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
  • Received:2024-03-06 Online:2025-01-23 Published:2025-01-18
  • Contact: CHEN Juncai E-mail:cx991103823@163.com;juncaichen@swu.edu.cn

Abstract:

Symbiotic fungi in gastrointestinal tract of livestock and poultry refer to fungi that have been colonized in gastrointestinal tract persistently, and they maintain the stability of gastrointestinal microecosystem together with bacteria and other microbial flora. Many studies have shown that there are a large number of symbiotic fungi in the gastrointestinal tract of livestock and poultry, which not only will not cause diseases, but also have beneficial effects to the host. There are different kinds of gastrointestinal symbiotic fungi in different species. On the whole, the symbiotic fungi in the gastrointestinal tract of livestock and poultry mainly include Ascomycota, Basidiomycota and Neocallimastigomycota. The composition of symbiotic fungi community in gastrointestinal tract of livestock and poultry can be affected by many factors, such as diet, age, breed and health condition. Similar to bacteria, the research on symbiotic fungi is mainly carried out by traditional culture medium method and high-throughput sequencing method currently. The emerging cultureomics technologies can separate and identify more kinds of symbiotic fungi. Studies have shown that symbiotic fungi, as an important part of gastrointestinal microorganisms in livestock and poultry, directly or indirectly participate in various physiological processes, such as promoting the digestion of nutrients ingested by livestock and poultry, participating in host immune regulation, promoting the glycolysis, etc. In this paper, the symbiotic fungal probiotics or potential symbiotic fungal probiotics in gastrointestinal tract of livestock and poultry were reviewed on the types of symbiotic fungi, the main methods of identifying symbiotic fungi, the factors affecting the abundance of symbiotic fungi in gastrointestinal tract, the beneficial effects and mechanism of symbiotic fungi, in order to provide new ideas and references for regulating the gastrointestinal health of livestock and poultry.

Key words: symbiotic fungi, gastrointestinal tract of livestock and poultry, fungi culture, production performance, immune regulation

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