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1. Dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids effect on cecal microbiome profile of maturing broiler chicken

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psj.2025.105167  

   Jadhav, Vidya V; Fasina, Yewande O; Harrison, Scott H (July 2025, Poultry Science)

   Diet has been reported to impact the diversity and function of gut microbiota. Our study investigated the effect of dietary fat types on cecal microbial composition and predicted function in broiler chickens at days 41 and 55 of age. Four dietary fat sources were evaluated and compared to a control dietary fat source of poultry fat. These were for two diets rich in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) - fish oil and flaxseed oil, a diet rich in long-chain saturated fatty acid (SFA) - lard, and a diet rich in medium-chain saturated fatty acid - coconut oil. At day 55, broiler chickens fed a PUFA-rich diet maintained cecal microbial diversity while broiler chickens fed a SFA-rich diet exhibited a significant reduction in diversity compared to the control diet-fed chickens. More specifically, PUFA intake was associated with elevated levels of microbial carbohydrate metabolizing capability, contributing to efficient energy utilization and enhanced short-chain fatty acid production capability. In contrast, SFA-rich diets lowered abundances for key microbial families like Lachnospiraceae and Bifidobacteriaceae hampering nutrient digestibility and pathogen resistance. The microbiomes for chickens fed lard and coconut oil diets showed a significant reduction in SCFA-producing microbial taxa abundance while the microbial functional profile indicated reduced carbohydrate metabolism. Our findings underscore the contrasting effects of SFA-rich fat and PUFA-rich fat on the cecal microbiota of broiler chickens. The results suggest that incorporating PUFArich dietary fats into broiler feed may offer potential benefits by modulating the cecal gut microbiota toward outcomes associated with elevated carbohydrate utilization without hampering nutrient digestibility and pathogen resistance. 

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2. Aqueous Upcycling of Polyethylene Furanoate From Mixed Plastic Feeds Into Metal‐Organic Frameworks

   https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.4173692  

   Tan, Tristan_T Y; Huang, Jiawei; Goh, Clemen_J G; Loh, Wei Wei; Huang, Hencong; Otake, Ken‐ichi; Lin, Qianyu; Zeng, Wenyi; Wang, Yinqiao; Ong, Derek Yiren; et al (May 2026, Angewandte Chemie International Edition)

   ABSTRACT Mixed and contaminated plastic waste is the dominant obstacle to plastics' circularity because most recycling or upcycling technologies require clean, pre‐sorted feedstocks. Here, we demonstrate a sorting‐free upcycling method with purification embedded in upcycling. Polyethylene furanoate (PEF), an emerging biomass‐derived polyester, is converted in water into the valuable metal‐organic framework (MOF) MIL‐160 in high yield. This method remains effective when using unsorted polymer mixtures, including mixtures containing competing polyesters such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polylactic acid (PLA), yielding a pure MOF with no loss in sorption performance. To address the MOF's own end‐of‐life, we demonstrate the ease of recovering 2,5‐furan‐dicarboxylic acid (FDCA) from MIL‐160 for recycling and redeployment to produce other MOFs such as CAU‐28. This connects plastic upcycling to MOF end‐of‐life management, showing that the upcycled product is not a dead‐end material but a reversible reservoir of FDCA that can be recovered and recirculated. Life cycle assessment showed that producing MIL‐160 from mixed PET/PEF plastic feedstock results in a 31% reduction in life‐cycle global warming potential compared to using biomass directly. Additionally, techno‐economic analysis supported the economic feasibility of producing MIL‐160 from mixed PET/PEF. Valorizing PEF into MOFs with diverse applications offers viable end‐of‐life solutions for these bioplastics. 

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3. Horizontal Gene Transfer Is the Main Driver of Antimicrobial Resistance in Broiler Chicks Infected with Salmonella enterica Serovar Heidelberg

   https://doi.org/10.1128/mSystems.00729-21  

   Oladeinde, Adelumola; Abdo, Zaid; Press, Maximilian O.; Cook, Kimberly; Cox, Nelson A.; Zwirzitz, Benjamin; Woyda, Reed; Lakin, Steven M.; Thomas, Jesse C.; Looft, Torey; et al (August 2021, mSystems)

   Garrido, Daniel (Ed.)

   ABSTRACT The overuse and misuse of antibiotics in clinical settings and in food production have been linked to the increased prevalence and spread of antimicrobial resistance (AR). Consequently, public health and consumer concerns have resulted in a remarkable reduction in antibiotics used for food animal production. However, there are no data on the effectiveness of antibiotic removal in reducing AR shared through horizontal gene transfer (HGT). In this study, we used neonatal broiler chicks and Salmonella enterica serovar Heidelberg, a model food pathogen, to test if chicks raised antibiotic free harbor transferable AR. We challenged chicks with an antibiotic-susceptible S . Heidelberg strain using various routes of inoculation and determined if S . Heidelberg isolates recovered carried plasmids conferring AR. We used antimicrobial susceptibility testing and whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to show that chicks grown without antibiotics harbored an antimicrobial resistant S . Heidelberg population at 14 days after challenge and chicks challenged orally acquired AR at a higher rate than chicks inoculated via the cloaca. Using 16S rRNA gene sequencing, we found that S . Heidelberg infection perturbed the microbiota of broiler chicks, and we used metagenomics and WGS to confirm that a commensal Escherichia coli population was the main reservoir of an IncI1 plasmid acquired by S . Heidelberg. The carriage of this IncI1 plasmid posed no fitness cost to S . Heidelberg but increased its fitness when exposed to acidic pH in vitro . These results suggest that HGT of plasmids carrying AR shaped the evolution of S . Heidelberg and that antibiotic use reduction alone is insufficient to limit antibiotic resistance transfer from commensal bacteria to Salmonella enterica . IMPORTANCE The reported increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria in humans has resulted in a major shift away from antibiotic use in food animal production. This shift has been driven by the assumption that removing antibiotics will select for antibiotic susceptible bacterial taxa, which in turn will allow the currently available antibiotic arsenal to be more effective. This change in practice has highlighted new questions that need to be answered to assess the effectiveness of antibiotic removal in reducing the spread of antibiotic resistance bacteria. This research demonstrates that antibiotic-susceptible Salmonella enterica serovar Heidelberg strains can acquire multidrug resistance from commensal bacteria present in the gut of neonatal broiler chicks, even in the absence of antibiotic selection. We demonstrate that exposure to acidic pH drove the horizontal transfer of antimicrobial resistance plasmids and suggest that simply removing antibiotics from food animal production might not be sufficient to limit the spread of antimicrobial resistance. 

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4. Nutrient recovery in cultured meat systems: Impacts on cost and sustainability metrics

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2023.1151801  

   Myers, Gabrielle M.; Jaros, Kate A.; Andersen, Daniel S.; Raman, D. Raj (April 2023, Frontiers in Nutrition)

   A growing global meat demand requires a decrease in the environmental impacts of meat production. Cultured meat (CM) can potentially address multiple challenges facing animal agriculture, including those related to animal welfare and environmental impacts, but existing cost analyses suggest it is hard for CM to match the relatively low costs of conventionally produced meat. This study analyzes literature reports to contextualize CM’s protein and calorie use efficiencies, comparing CM to animal meat products’ feed conversion ratios, areal productivities, and nitrogen management. Our analyses show that CM has greater protein and energy areal productivities than conventional meat products, and that waste nitrogen from spent media is critical to CM surpassing the nitrogen use efficiency of meat produced in swine and broiler land-applied manure systems. The CM nutrient management costs, arising from wastewater treatment and land application, are estimated to be more expensive than in conventional meat production. Overall, this study demonstrates that nitrogen management will be a key aspect of sustainability in CM production, as it is in conventional meat systems. 

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5. Chlorinated Plastics Offer Unique Opportunities and Challenges in Upcycling

   https://doi.org/10.1002/pi.6621  

   Al Alshaikh, Ali; Bara, Jason E. (February 2024, Polymer International)

   Abstract Chlorinated plastics are part of the everyday lives of consumers and producers alike. They can be found in buildings, automobiles, fashion, packaging, and many other places. This prevalence makes them a considerable part of the plastic waste crisis. Interest in “upcycling” (as opposed to recycling) has grown recently to augment the possibilities of managing plastic waste. The advances made in plastic upcycling have focused on polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polystyrene (PS) while chlorinated plastics, chiefly polyvinyl chloride (PVC), have received much less attention. The release of chlorine‐containing molecules during treatment of chlorinated plastic greatly complicates cross‐method upcycling, or even the treatment of plastic mixes containing chlorinated plastics. This review presents a case for extracting value from chlorinated plastics by highlighting appealing upcycling products made owing to, or despite, the C‐Cl bond via depolymerization, carbonization and modification. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. 

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