Figure 7: A maternal high fat diet persistently and significantly alters functional microbial metabolic pathways among juvenile offspring.

Bacterial metabolic pathways of juveniles differ based on maternal gestational diet. Correlations between a PICRUSt-generated functional profile and a QIIME-generated genus level bacterial abundance were calculated and plotted subject to the gestation/lactation diet between juveniles exposed to a maternal control or high-fat diet. Only genera identified by Boruta feature selection and LEfSe as significantly different between juveniles exposed to a control versus high-fat gestational/lactational diet are shown in the figure. Metabolic pathway designations are indicated at the bottom of the graph. The upper part of the graph represents juveniles exposed to a control diet gestation/lactation (CTD/CTD, red bar) while the lower part represents juveniles exposed to a high-fat diet during gestation/lactation (HFD/CTD, orange bar). The shading intensity of the bubble, along with size, is indicative of the Kendall rank correlation coefficient between matrices. Blue designates a positive correlation while orange/red designates a negative correlation. Red squares surrounding a bubble are indicative of a significant P-value≤0.05 by Kendall’s test; n=3 juveniles exposed to control/control diet, and n=4 for juveniles exposed to high-fat diet/control diet.