Understanding the link between mother’s obesity and regulation of the child’s appetite is a prerequisite for the design of successful preventive strategies. Further investigation of these tracks requires more precise bacterial identification, if possible at the strain level, since differences in physiological effects have been observed at this taxonomic scale, particularly in the case of appetite regulation by the intestinal microbiota (Chagwedera et al., 2019).

coli synthetize dopamine (see Lyte and Lyte, 2019 for review) while this property is present in less than 5% of the bacterial genomes representative of the human intestinal microbiota (Valles-Colomer et al., 2019).

Similarly, the correlation that we observe for females between the abundance of cluster 10 (affiliated to Enterobacteriaceae) at PND21 and z-score is intriguing since E. With this respect, the association we observed in males between the abundance of UBA1819 (a taxon affiliated to the Faecalibacterium sp.) which was significantly more abundant in the F-OR group at weaning and the total fat consumption during taste preference tests is of particular interest given the immunomodulatory potential of some species belonging to this genus (Delgado et al., 2020). As stress and disease are ever-present, intersecting concerns during each stage of swine production, novel strategies utilizing a microbial endocrinology-based approach will likely prove invaluable to the swine industry.

More recent investigations have now shown that microbial endocrinology also plays a role in animal behavior through the microbiota–gut–brain axis. Multiple laboratories have confirmed the evolutionary role of microbial endocrinology in infectious disease pathogenesis extending from animals to even plants. Catecholamines, the production of which increase in response to stress, reach the epithelium of multiple tissues, including the gastrointestinal tract and lung, where they initiate diverse responses by members of the microbiome as well as transient microorganisms, including pathogens and opportunistic pathogens. Several such neurochemicals are stress catecholamines, which have been shown to drastically increase host susceptibility to infection and augment virulence of important swine pathogens, including Clostridium perfringens. Indeed, the landmark discovery of host neuroendocrine systems as hubs of host–microbe communication revealed neurochemicals act as an inter-kingdom evolutionary-based language between microorganism and host. Microbial endocrinology is the study of the bi-directional dialogue between host and microbe. These routes of communication are bi-directional, allowing the swine host to likewise influence microbial survival, function and community composition.

Exposure of the skin, gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts, and other systems allows microorganisms to affect the developmental trajectory and function of porcine physiology as well as impact behavior. From birth to slaughter, pigs are in constant interaction with microorganisms.

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