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. 2014 Jun 25:4:5437.
doi: 10.1038/srep05437.

Functional divergence in gastrointestinal microbiota in physically-separated genetically identical mice

G B Rogers  1 , J Kozlowska  2 , J Keeble  2 , K Metcalfe  3 , M Fao  3 , S E Dowd  4 , A J Mason  2 , M A McGuckin  5 , K D Bruce  2
Affiliations

Functional divergence in gastrointestinal microbiota in physically-separated genetically identical mice

G B Rogers et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Despite the fundamental contribution of the gut microbiota to host physiology, the extent of its variation in genetically-identical animals used in research is not known. We report significant divergence in both the composition and metabolism of gut microbiota in genetically-identical adult C57BL/6 mice housed in separate controlled units within a single commercial production facility. The reported divergence in gut microbiota has the potential to confound experimental studies using mammalian models.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Heat map analysis of the predominant genera identified in this study.
A hierarchal cluster diagram was constructed using Ward's minimum variance clustering and Manhattan distances. Room group 1 and room group 2 exhibit some co-clustering indicating differences within the groups. The heatmap describes the relative percentage in each sample of the associated genera with a legend provided in the upper left of the figure.
Figure 2
Figure 2. OPLS-DA scores plots (left panels) and back-scaled loadings plots (right panels) for comparisons between the murine faecal metabolomes as clustered according to microbiota data composition.
Resonances with high variance and high weight are highlighted in red. The distinguishing metabolites that could be unambiguously assigned are annotated in each back-scaled loadings plot. Q2 values for the cross-validated OPLS-DA comparisons are provided in Table 1.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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