Fig. 3: Changes of the gut bifidobacterial community along aging.

a Bray–Cutis dissimilarity between bifidobacterial communities of adjacent ages. Each dot represents the distance between one bifidobacterial community at a specific age and another bifidobacterial community at the age one year younger. b Relative abundance of Bifidobacterium. c Relative abundance of each Bifidobacterium specie. b, c each dot represents a sample. Fitting curves of loess regression models are indicated with blue lines, and those of linear regression models are indicated with red dash lines. Black vertical dash lines indicate key change points (age 16 or 30) in the development of bifidobacterial community. n = 1536.