Effects of n-3 Fatty Acids Supplementation on Performance, Relative Organ Weight and Fatty Acid Composition of Thigh Meat in Broiler Chickens

This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of dietary supplementation with marine microbe accumulating n-3 fatty acids on growth performance, relative organ weight and fatty acid composition of thigh meat in broilers. A total of 480 broilers were randomly allotted to three treat-ments with eight replications per treatment and 20 chicks per pen. A corn-soybean meal-based diet was formulated as a control diet and the broilers were then provided with one of the following dietary treatments:(1) CON(basal diet);(2) N0.1(basal diet+0.10% marine microbe accumulating n-3 fatty acids);(3) N0.2(basal diet+0.20% marine microbe accumulating n-3 fatty acids). No significant differences were observed in the growth performance or the relative organ weight among treatments. However, the levels of saturated fatty acids(SFA) and monounsaturated fatty acids(MUFA)were significantly lower(P<0.05) in groups that received the n-3 fatty acids treatments, whereas polyunsaturated fatty acids(PUFA) were increased(P<0.05) significantly in these groups. Overall, these results indicate that dietary supplementation with marine microbe accumulating n-3 fatty acids can increase PUFA and decrease SFA and MUFA in thigh meat.

Antimicrobial metabolites from marine microorganisms

Marine ecological niches have recently been described as "particularly promising" sources for search of new antimicrobials to combat antibiotic-resistant strains of pathogenic microorganisms. Marine organisms are excellent sources for many industrial products, but they are partly explored. Over 30 000 compounds have been isolated from marine sources. Bacteria, fungi, and cyanobacteria obtained from various marine sources secret several industrially useful bioactive compounds, possessing antibacterial, antifungal, and antimycobacterial activities. Sustainable cultivation methods for promising marine organisms and biotechnological processes for selected compounds can be developed, along with the establishment of biosensors for monitoring the target compounds. The semisynthetic modifications of marine-based bioactive compounds produce their new derivatives, structural analogs and mimetics that could serve as novel lead compounds against resistant pathogens. The present review focuses on promising antimicrobial compounds isolated from marine microbes from 1991-2013.

Exploring the interaction patterns among taxa and environments from marine metagenomic data

The sequencing revolution driven by high-throughput technologies has generated a huge amount of marine microbial sequences which hide the interaction patterns among microbial species and environment factors. Exploring these patterns is helpful for exploiting the marine resources. In this paper, we use the complex network approach to mine and analyze the interaction patterns of marine taxa and environments in spring, summer, fall and winter seasons. With the 16S rRNA pyrosequencing data of 76 time point taken monthly over 6 years, we first use our MtHc clustering algorithm to generate the operational taxonomic units （OTUs）. Then, employ the k-means method to divide 76 time point samples into four seasonal groups, and utilize mutual information （MI） to construct the four correlation networks among microbial species and environment factors. Finally, we adopt the symmetrical non-negative matrix factorization method to detect the interaction patterns, and analysis the relationship between marine species and environment factors. The results show that the four seasonal microbial interaction networks have the characters of complex networks, and interaction patterns are related with the seasonal variability; the same environmental factor influences different species in the four seasons; the four environmental factors of day length, photosynthetically active radiation, NO2＋ NO3 and silicate may have stronger influences on microbes than other environment factors.