Fig. 2

Estrogen alters the gut microbiome. Male (M), normal female (F), and ovariectomized (OVX) female mice were divided in to five groups (M, F, M + E2, OVX, and OVX+E2; n = 5/group) and were fed western diet (WD) ± 17β-estradiol (E2) in the drinking water for 6 weeks. a β-diversity analysis of whole microbiota relative abundance (RA) using principal coordinate analysis (PCOA) with Bray-Curtis dissimilarity index (BCD) followed by permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) significance test. b Similarity percentage (SIMPER) analysis with BCD was used to identify the specific genera with the greatest contribution to the differences observed between the groups, followed by principal component analysis (PCA) (variance-covariance type) showing the top 10 operational taxonomic unit (OTU) scores included as vectors. The magnitude and direction correspond to the weights. c Analysis at the phylum level using RA (%). d Hierarchical clustering with a heat map shows the RA of representative OTUs (those with greatest difference between five groups) group means from each family selected for P < 0.05, obtained with differential abundance analysis. The OTUs are shown as OTU number, phylum and family. e Cladogram generated from linear discriminant analysis (LDA) effect size (LEfSe) showing the relationship between taxon (the levels represent, from the inner to outer rings, phylum, class, order, family, and genus). f–i Scatter plots showing the phylum Proteobacteria, Firmicutes (FIR) to Bacteroidetes (BAC) ratio, Bifidobacterium (B) to Enterobacteriacea (E) ratio and RA of genus Akkermansia (%). Data was shown as mean ± SEM. Data with different superscript letters are significantly different (P < 0.05). One-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s multiple comparisons test