Fig 1.
A) Bar Graph colitis scores in TNBS (n = 18) and SHAM (n = 18) treated mice. ****T-test p<0.0001. Values plotted as Mean ± SEM B) Bar graph of differences in colitis score by sex (female n = 8, male n = 10) in TNBS treated mice. T-test *p<0.05. Values plotted as Mean ± SEM C) Hemotoxilin and eosin stained representative photomicrographs of colon showing a mixed inflammatory cell infiltrate in the mucosa of male TNBS treated animals (#) and necrosis and loss of glands, in addition to mild, mixed inflammation (*) in the mucosa of female TNBS treated mice. 20x magnification. Scale bar 100 microns.
Fig 2.
A) Significant differences in beta diversity in the feces of TNBS and SHAM treated mice post-colitis calculated using the Bray Curtis metric. Treatment separates along PC1, which explains approximately 30% of the total variation in the data. Significance found with PERMANOVA p<0.05. PERMDISP indicates dispersion does not contribute to significance. B) Significant differences in beta diversity in the colon mucus of TNBS and SHAM treated mice post-colitis calculated using Weighted UniFrac. Treatment separates along PC1, which explains approximately 76% of the total variation in the data. Significance found with PERMANOVA p<0.05. PERMDISP indicates dispersion does not contribute to significance.
Fig 3.
PCoA reveals significant differences in beta diversity by body site, regardless of treatment.
Site separates along PC1 and PC2, explaining 20% and 12.6% of the total variation, respectively. Significance found with PERMANOVA (p<0.05). Permdisp indicates that dispersions does not contribute to significance.
Fig 4.
Plots of significantly different taxa across body sites and treatment groups.
Overall significance found using ANCOM, and values were corrected for multiple comparisons using False Discovery Rate. Follow-up pairwise tests were performed using Welch’s t-test. *p<0.05, **p < .01, ***p<0.001, ****p<0.0001.
Fig 5.
Canonical Correspondence Analysis on the relative taxon abundances reveals that colitis score is more closely associated with the mucus microbiome than the fecal microbiome.
Feces is closely associated with CCA1, which explains 52.6% of the constrained variation. TNBS treatment and colitis score was associated with CCA2 and CCA3, which explains 23.8% and 15.2% of the constrained variation, respectively. Significance found using ANOVA p = 0.001.