Fig. 2: Intracortical microelectrode implantation affects the composition of bacterial sequences extracted from brain tissues, and compositional shifts are reduced in antibiotic-treated animals. | Nature Communications

Fig. 2: Intracortical microelectrode implantation affects the composition of bacterial sequences extracted from brain tissues, and compositional shifts are reduced in antibiotic-treated animals.

From: Bacteria invade the brain following intracortical microelectrode implantation, inducing gut-brain axis disruption and contributing to reduced microelectrode performance

Fig. 2

Short-term and long-term changes in 16S sequence prevalence and abundance were observed following IME implantation, which were mitigated by systemic antibiotic treatment. Biological replicate sample sizes: unimplanted control brain (n = 5), unimplanted antibiotic brain (n = 5), acute implanted control brain (n = 6), acute implanted antibiotic brain (n = 5), chronic implanted control brain (n = 7), chronic implanted antibiotic brain (n = 6). A Bar plots of the mean relative abundance of bacterial sequences by sample and phylum from 500 rarefactions. B Violin plots over raw data points of the mean Shannon Diversity Index in rarefied samples. 500 rarefactions performed and pairwise comparisons made using 2-sided Tukey’s Honest Significant Differences with multiple comparisons adjustment. C Violin plots over raw data points of the mean number of observed ASVs in rarefied samples. 500 rarefactions performed and pairwise comparisons made using 2-sided Tukey’s Honest Significant Differences with multiple comparisons adjustment. D Density contour plot of implanted brain and background samples of the untreated control cohort ordinated by Principal Components Analysis (PCoA) on rarefied samples using the unweighted UniFrac distance with 2-sided PERMANOVA test with the Benjamini-Hochberg correction for multiple testing. 10,000 permutations used in the analysis of 500 rarefactions, with the largest adjusted PERMANOVA p-value being p = 0.0025. E Density contour plot of implanted brain and background samples of the antibiotic-treated cohort ordinated by Principal Components Analysis (PCoA) on rarefied samples using the unweighted UniFrac distance with PERMANOVA test. 10,000 permutations used in the analysis of 500 rarefactions, with the smallest unadjusted PERMANOVA p-value being p = 0.2668. Created in BioRender. Capadona, J. (2025) https://BioRender.com/c43l764.

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