Fig 1.
Effects of YNKB on physical features, biochemical features and histopathological findings of HFD-induced ApoE-/- mice.
(A) The relative body weight gains; (B) The daily food intake (measured weekly); (C) The relative epididymal pad weights; (D) The relative liver weights of ApoE-/- mice; (E) TG; (F) TC; (G) HDL; (H) Atherosclerosis index; (I) AST and (J) ALT of ApoE-/- mice with YNKB supplementation; (K) Hepatic triglyceride and (L) cholesterol levels were determined. (M) Hepatic tissues were evaluated by HE staining. All photos are displayed under a 200x and 400x magnification. Data are presented as the mean ± S.D. *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001, ****p<0.0001.
Fig 2.
Microbiota changes in the composition of HFD-induced ApoE-/- mice by YNKB.
The rarefaction curves of alpha diversity ((A) Ace, (B) Chao, or (C) Shannon index); (D) Venn diagram of the OTUs in the three groups; The beta diversity as measured by (E) hierarchical clustering tree and (F) unweighted Unifrac PCoA analysis.
Fig 3.
Effects of YNKB on gut microbiota relative proportion in HFD-induced ApoE-/- mic at phylum level.
(A) The main microbiota and their relative proportions in different groups. Data are presented as means. The top five and fifteen microbiotas and their relative proportions in different groups at phylum level (B) and genus level (C). Differences in dominant microorganisms among groups were shown in (D) Cladogram and (E) Distribution histogram based on LDA. *p<0.05, **p<0.01 among the four groups.
Table 1.
The changes of the top fifteen genera by the treatment of YNKB.
Fig 4.
Spearman’s correlation between the identified microbiota at different levels.
((A) phylum, (B) class, and (C) genus) and the ALT, AST, TC, TG, pre-post weight, relative epidydimal adipose weight and liver weight. The color of the squares represents the R-value of Spearman’s correlation. *p<0.05, ** p <0.01, *** p<0.001.
Fig 5.
Pronounced metabolomic shift in response to hyperlipidemia and YNKB treatment.
(A) PCA analysis of serum metabolites; (B) Four metabolites with differential abundance between the normal and HFD groups, restored by YNKB administration; (C) Spearman’s correlation between the identified four metabolites and microbiota at the genus level. The color of the squares represents the R-value of Spearman’s correlation. The pathway set enrichment analyses were performed using Metabolanalyst (www.metabolanalyst.ca) to elucidate the metabolic pathways affected by metabolite distinctions between the normal, HFD, and YNKB treatment groups; (D) The analysis between the N and HFD groups; (E) The analysis between the HFD and HFD+L groups; (F) The analysis between the HFD and HFD+H groups. *p<0.05, ** p <0.01, *** p<0.001.