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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2024 Jun 22.
Published in final edited form as: Cell. 2023 Jun 22;186(13):2839–2852.e21. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.05.037

Figure 4: Compensation and functional redundancy within the 7α-dehydroxylation niche.

Figure 4:

(A) Schematic of the experiment. Germ-free C57BL/6 mice (n=3 per group) were colonized with hCom1a, ΔCs, or ΔCh and housed for 3 weeks before sacrifice. Cecal contents were subjected to metagenomic and targeted metabolomic profiling. (B) Compensation within the 7α-dehydroxylation niche keeps the total relative abundance of its residents similar. Relative abundances of Cs and Ch in cecal contents from hCom1a-, ΔCh-, and ΔCs-colonized mice are shown. (C) Metabolic pathways for bile acid transformation by the gut microbiota. (D) The bile acid pools of mice colonized by hCom1a, ΔCh, and ΔCs are comparable. Thus, in the context of a complete community, Ch and Cs can carry out the core function of the niche—the conversion of primary to secondary bile acids—on its own. See also Figure S3 and S5, and Table S3 and S4.