Fig. 3: Gut methane-oxidizing bacteria relieve methane-linked abnormal fat metabolism.
A The experimental design for four-week intervention of methane and gut MOB. B Comparisons among different groups in adipose tissue weight from different depots (n = 4). C Blood indexes of mice. TC: total cholesterol. HDL: high-density lipoprotein. TG: triglyceride. LDL: low-density lipoprotein (n = 4). D GSEA of the ‘Fat digestion and absorption’ pathway based on ileum transcriptomes collected after 1 week in different groups. NES: normalized enrichment score. P-value estimation is based on an adaptive multi-level split Monte-Carlo scheme (FGSEA method) with Benjamini/Hochberg correction. E Volcano plot highlighting different genes belonging to the ‘Fat digestion and absorption’ pathway. Only genes in this pathway with |log2 fold change| > 2 and P-value < 0.05 are marked with color, DESeq2 method. F Venn diagram showing the number of unique and overlapping genes between the different gene sets belonging to the ‘Fat digestion and absorption’ pathway. The left circle represents CH4 vs. Control. The right circle represents CH4+MOB vs. CH4. And the qPCR result of the overlapping gene (Fabp1) is shown (n = 3). G Experimental design for the two-week diet intervention. Mice were subjected to a high-fat and high-sugar treatment by oral gavage of 0.4 ml lard per mouse per day and ad libitum access to high-concentration sucrose water for two weeks. H Representative eWAT in different groups. I The adipose tissue weight from different depots (n = 4). J Cross sections of various adipose tissue depots stained with hematoxylin and eosin (n = 3). (WAT: white adipose tissue; BAT, brown adipose tissue; eWAT: epididymal WAT; ingWAT: inguinal WAT; mWAT: mesenteric WAT). Data are presented as means ± standard of mean in F and J, except for boxplots in B, C and E (center line or point, median; box limits, 25th and 75th percentile; whiskers, Tukey; points, outliers). Statistical analysis was performed with two-tailed Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon test (B, C, I), and the two-tailed unpaired t-test with Benjamini/Hochberg correction (F, J). Individual data points are independent biological replicates unless otherwise stated. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
