Fig. 1: Consumption of different dietary components affects the orientation of invertible regions in gut bacteria, specifically B. theta.

a Heatmap of phase variable regions (PVRs) that were significantly affected by at least one food component (marked in red, p-value < 0.05, Benjamini-Hochberg-based FDR). Bacterial species are indicated on the right, and bacterial strains are marked in different colors on the left. b Clusters of CD and UC patients, and healthy individuals according to their consumption of different dietary components, which had a significant effect on the ratio of reverse orientation in invertible regions of B. theta. c–e 1. Visualization of the PVRs. Genes are marked as arrows and colored based on their assigned function, inverted repeats are marked with black lines. 2. Inversion rates of each region in each of the clusters. Each dot represents an individual. The individuals’ health status is marked: red—CD, green—healthy, blue—UC. 3. Inversion rates of each region according to individuals’ status. Each dot represents an individual. Individuals’ assigned cluster is marked: green—cluster 1, orange—cluster 2, purple—cluster 3. 4. The dietary components that distinguish the clusters in each of the regions. Consumption scoring is calculated as the average of scores by all individuals within the cluster when: 1—“No, I did not consume these products in the last 7 days”, 2—“Within the past 4 to 7 days”, 3—“Within the past 2 to 3 days”, 4—“Yesterday, 1 to 2 times” and 5- “Yesterday, 3 or more times”. 5 -log10 adjusted p-value of each food component comparing all three clusters. The dashed red line indicates the significance threshold. CD Crohn’s disease, UC ulcerative colitis. c 2–5 CD n = 37, UC n = 23, Healthy n = 19, d 2–5 CD n = 147, UC n = 91, Healthy n = 97, e 2–5 CD n = 47, UC n = 29, Healthy n = 25. Box plots limits represent the upper quartile and the lower quartile, the central line represents the median, whiskers represent the maximum and minimum. a - t-test with Benjamini-Hochberg-based FDR adjustment, c–e 2, 3—Wilcoxon rank sum test. *P < 0.05 and **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, all exact p-values are listed under “P-values” sheet in the Source Data file. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. b Illustration was created in BioRender. Geva-Zatorsky, N. (2025) https://BioRender.com/z8wfwcw.