Fig. 1: Synbiotic galactooligosaccharides (GOS) and L. reuteri effectively ameliorates intestinal inflammation and barrier dysfunction and enriches Bacteroides acidifaciens.
After a week of acclimation, 8-week-old male C57BL/6 J mice (n = 6 per group) were supplemented with GOS (5%, w/w) to the diet for five weeks with or without daily oral gavage of 2 × 108 CFU L. reuteri. Colitis was induced by providing 3% DSS in drinking water in the final week. a, b Study design and body weight change in DSS-treated mice supplemented with GOS and L. reuteri individually or in combination. c–e The length, H&E staining, Alcian blue staining, and histological damage score of the colon in DSS-treated mice supplemented with GOS and L. reuteri individually or in combination. f, g Relative protein expressions of tight junction proteins in the colon and serum concentrations of pro-inflammatory cytokines in DSS-treated mice supplemented with GOS and L. reuteri individually or in combination. h–j Principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) of weighted UniFrac distances, microbiota composition, and differential abundance of the fecal microbiota at the genus. k Relative abundance of B. acidifaciens and A. muciniphila in DSS-treated mice supplemented with GOS and L. reuteri individually or in combination detected by RT-qPCR with specific primers. l Random forest analysis of the shotgun metagenomic sequencing data for the most important discriminating bacterial taxon between treatments. Samples for western blot were derived from the same experiment and gels/blots were processed in parallel. The Kruskal–Wallis test and post-hoc Dunn’s was used for microbial analysis, and one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s test was used for statistical analysis of all other parameters. Data were presented as mean ± SEM. Source data were provided as a Source Data file.
