Figure 3

Relative microbial abundance of fecal microbiota changes throughout pregnancy and lactation and is affected by diet.

Abundance of fecal microbiota from pregnant and lactating dams fed either a high-fat/sucrose diet (HFS obese control group), the high-fat/sucrose diet supplemented with 10% wt/wt oligofructose (OFS group), or a restricted amount of the high-fat/sucrose diet in order to match body weight to the OFS dams (WM) was determined using real-time qPCR. Microbial abundance was measured as 16 S rRNA gene copies per 20 ng DNA and reported here as the relative abundance (%) of bacterial taxa per total bacteria. Longitudinal analysis of maternal fecal relative abundance on gestation days 1, 14 and 21 (G1, G14, G21) and lactation days 1 and 19 (L1, L19) was performed using repeated measures one-way ANOVA, where the between subjects factor was maternal diet and the within-subjects factor was timepoint (gestation days 1, 14 and 21 and lactation days 1 and 19). Values are mean ± SEM. Mean values without a common letter are significantly different using one-way ANOVA (P < 0.05) and indicate there was a significant interaction between time and maternal diet (P < 0.05). HFS, n = 11 except for A. muciniphila and C. coccoides where n = 10; OFS, n = 12; WM, n = 9.