Fig. 3: Methionine restriction alters gut microbiota in immunocompetent mice.
a, MR significantly disrupted three major bacterial taxa in Apcmin+/− mice. The faecal bacteria abundance in diet-fed Apcmin+/− mice were determined by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing (n = 12 mice on CTRL diet; 11 mice on MR diet, two-tailed unpaired Student’s t-test). b, MR significantly disrupted four major bacterial groups in C57BL/6J (B6) mice (n = 10 mice per group, two-tailed unpaired Student’s t-test). c, MR reduced Faecalibaculum and Lactobacillus but increased Bifidobacterium in the small intestine of B6 mice (n = 10 mice per group, two-tailed unpaired Student’s t-test). d, MR repressed the expression of Muc2 and Gal3st2 in the tumour-containing colons of Apcmin+/− mice. The mRNA abundance of Muc2 and Gal3st2 was analysed by qPCR with lamin as a loading control (n = 6 mice on CTRL diet and 5 mice on MR diet, two-tailed unpaired Student’s t-test; one outlier in Gal3st2 MR group was removed by >Q3 + 3.0 times the IQR). e, MR reduced the mucin in the colons of Apcmin+/− mice. The colonic sections of Apcmin+/− mice on different diets were stained with the high-iron diamine and Alcian blue, and the percentages of total mucin-positive area were quantified in Fiji (n = 6 mice on control diet and n = 5 mice on MR diet, two-tailed unpaired Student’s t-test). Values are expressed as the mean ± s.e.m. Details of statistical tests are in Methods.
