With the prohibition of antibiotics in feed, plant functional substances have been widely studied as feed additives. Resveratrol, a natural stilbene, and a non-flavonoid polyphenol found in plants, possesses antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and metabolic regulatory features. Resveratrol generated intense scientific and public interest, primarily due to its widely reported ability to prevent cancer, delay aging and alleviate related metabolic diseases. Recently, resveratrol has been studied and applied as a feed additive in animal production. This review focuses on the outline of the absorption and metabolism and biological functions of resveratrol and summarizes the application of dietary resveratrol in animal production up to the present, including pigs, poultry, and ruminants. In pigs, dietary resveratrol improved intestinal health, mitochondrial function, meat quality, and more. In poultry, studies have shown that dietary resveratrol improves growth performance and meat and egg quality and alleviates heat stress induced adverse effects. There are few studies on dietary resveratrol in ruminants; however previous studies have indicated that dietary resveratrol increases nutrient digestibility and reduces methane emissions in sheep. It is hoped that this review could provide a specific theoretical basis and research ideas for the research and application of resveratrol.

Intestinal diseases are highly prevalent, affecting millions worldwide and significantly contributing to global morbidity. The treatment of complex disorders, such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and colorectal cancer (CRC), remains challenging due to multifactorial etiologies, diverse patient responses, and the limitations of current therapeutic strategies. Although the gut microbiota clearly plays a role in regulating the onset of intestinal diseases, few studies have explored the epigenetic factors by which the microbiota contributes to disease development. Here, the latest insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the bidirectional influence between gut microbiota and epigenetic modifications are discussed, including DNA methylation, histone modifications, non-coding RNAs, and N6-methyladenosine (m⁶A). Importantly, mechanistic studies based on animal models or human cells have demonstrated that the gut microbiota, and other environmental factors, influence targeted gene expression and activate immune pathways through host epigenetic dysregulation, which are closely associated with the development of IBD and CRC. Furthermore, potential microbiome interventions, including probiotics, prebiotics and postbiotics, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), dietary modifications, and phage therapy, have been proposed as innovative therapeutic strategies to correct these abnormal epigenetic patterns associated with the diseases. Overall, addressing microbiome dysbiosis and its epigenetic consequences presents a promising frontier in the treatment of intestinal diseases, offering the potential to not only restore microbial balance but also provide more targeted and personalized therapeutic strategies for better patient outcomes.

Background: Acid-tolerant enteric pathogens can evade small intestinal acid barriers, colonize and infect the intestinal tract. However, broad-spectrum antibiotics are not the best therapeutic strategy because of the disruption of intestinal flora caused by its indiscriminate antimicrobial activity against beneficial and harmful bacteria. So that is what inspired us to combine pH regulation with nanotechnology to develop a pH-triggered site-targeted antimicrobial peptide with entrapping function. Results: A pH-triggered dual biological functional self-assembled peptide (SAP) was designed according to the features of amino-acid building blocks and the diagonal cation–π interaction principle. The results of characterization experiments showed that changes in pH conditions could trigger microstructural transformation of the nanopeptide from nanospheres to nanofibers. The subsequent antibacterial and toxicity experiments determined that SAP had great antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, Listeria monocytogenes, and Bacillus cereus above 15.6 μg/mL under acidic conditions by disrupting bacterial membrane integrity, excellent biocompatibility in vitro even at 250 μg/mL and high tolerance in physical environment. Moreover, at peptide concentrations greater than 62.5 μg/mL, SAP showed the entrapment property, which played an important role in phagocytic clearance in infection forces. Meanwhile, the in vivo results revealed that SAP possessed excellent therapeutic effect and good biosafety. Conclusions: Our study revealed the antibacterial activity of a short β-hairpin forming self-assembled peptide, and established an innovative design strategy for peptide-based nanomaterials and a new treatment strategy for gastrointestinal bacterial infections. Graphic

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are excellent candidates to combat the increasing number of multi- or pan-resistant pathogens worldwide based on their mechanism of action, which is different from that of antibiotics. In this study, we designed short peptides by fusing an α-helix and β-turn sequence-motif in a symmetric-end template to promote the higher cell selectivity, antibacterial activity and salt-resistance of these structures. The results showed that the designed peptides PQ and PP tended to form an α-helical structure upon interacting with a membrane-mimicking environment. They displayed high cell selectivity toward bacterial cells over eukaryotic cells. Their activities were mostly maintained in the presence of different conditions (salts, serum, heat, and pH), which indicated their stability in vivo. Fluorescence spectroscopy and electron microscopy analyses indicated that PP and PQ killed bacterial cells through membrane pore formation, thereby damaging membrane integrity. This study revealed the potential application of these designed peptides as new candidate antimicrobial agents.