16s rDNA Raw sequence reads of cecal microbiota of broiler
The DNA Isolation Kit (Tiangen, Beijing, China) was used for bacterial genomic DNA extraction from the contents of duodenum, jejunum, ileum and cecum, and the quality of the extracted DNA was checked by agarose gel electrophoresis and spectrophotometric analysis. All the genomic DNA samples were stored at -80  for further experiments. 16s rRNA PCR amplification and 454 pyrosequencing were performed according to a previous study (18). Sequences obtained through 454 pyrosequencing were then filtered by QIIME software (QIIME version 1.9.1) with default parameters. The operational taxonomic unit (OTU) clustering pipeline UPARSE was used to select OTU at 97% similarity.