Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 2 pp 1965—1986

Figure 4. Anesthesia/surgery induces age-dependent changes in the gut microbiota. (A) OUT-based PLS-DA analysis showed that the anesthesia/surgery induced significant alterations in the component of the gut microbiota in 18, but not 9, months old mice. Different colors and shapes represented the different groups. (B) The number of community species between the different groups demonstrated that the anesthesia/surgery caused different microbiota diversity between the 9 and 18 months old mice, on the Observed species (top left), chao (top middle), ace (top right), Shannon’s diversity (bottom left), Simpson diversity (bottom middle), and Good’s coverage (bottom right). (C) Heatmap (left panel) indicated the anesthesia/surgery induced different changes in bacterial community structure represented as relative abundance shown in genus level analysis between the 9 and 18 months old mice as compared to the control condition. Anesthesia/surgery caused different profiles in the bacterial community taxonomic composition distribution (right panel) represented as relative abundance shown in genus level between the 9 and 18 months old mice as compared to the control condition. (D) Quantification of the change rate in the relative abundance of gut microbiota at the genus level showed the anesthesia/surgery induced significant change rate of reduction in the relative abundance of Lactobacillus as compared to the control condition at 9 hours and 11 days post-anesthesia/surgery in the 18, but not 9, months old mice (F = 2.01, P = 0.169, one-way ANOVA for the 9 months old mice, F = 29.08, P < 0.001, one-way ANOVA for the 18 months old mice). (E) Heatmap (left panel) indicated the anesthesia/surgery induced different changes in bacterial community structure represented as relative abundance shown in species level analysis between the 9 and 18 months old mice as compared to the control condition. Anesthesia/surgery caused different profiles in the bacterial community taxonomic composition distribution (right panel) represented as relative abundance shown in species level between the 9 and 18 months old mice as compared to the control condition. (F) Quantification of the change rate in the relative abundance of gut microbiota at the species level showed that the anesthesia/surgery induced significant change rate of reduction in the relative abundance of Lactobacillus salivarius as compared to the control condition at 9 hours and 11 days post-anesthesia/surgery in the 18, but not 9, months old mice (F = 3.081, P = 0.122, one-way ANOVA for the 9 months old mice, F = 10.89, P = 0.014, one-way ANOVA for the 18 months old mice). Partial least-squares discriminant analysis = PLS-DA, OUT = operational taxonomic unit. One-way ANOVA and post-hoc Bonferroni comparison was used to analyze the data in the (D–F). * = P < 0.05; ** = P < 0.01.