Fig. 3.

Changes in the gut microbiota of immune-complex glomerulonephritis (ICGN) rats at the later stage. (A) Changes in the Chao1, observed species, Shannon, and Simpson indices in the sham and ICGN rats. (B) Differences in β-diversity (principal component analysis (PCoA)) based on both unweighted and weighted UniFrac between sham and ICGN rats. (C) Relative abundance at the phylum level between sham and ICGN rats (left) and the Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes (F/B) ratio (right). (D) Relative abundance at the family level between ICGN and sham rats. (E) Differential taxa between the two groups by linear discriminant analysis (LDA) effect size (LEfSe) analysis. (F) Differential genera of intestinal microbiota in sham and ICGN rats by LEfSe analysis (LDA > 3.5). (G) Genera whose relative abundances were significantly changed between the early and later stages in the sham group. (H) Genera whose relative abundances were significantly decreased in the later stage compared with the early stage in the ICGN group. (I) Genera whose relative abundances were significantly increased in the late stage compared with the early stage in the ICGN group. (J) Enriched Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways at levels dominated by sham and ICGN rats, respectively. (K) Histopathological images of colon tissues by hematoxylin and eosin (HE) (top) staining and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) (bottom). The red arrow indicates the intestinal villi and the yellow arrow indicates the tight junction. (L, M) Tight junction proteins of intestinal epithelium, zonula occludins-1 (ZO-1), MUC2, occludin-1, and claudin-1 (J), and their densitometric analysis (M). (N) Concentration of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in serum between sham and ICGN rats. ^∗P < 0.05, ^∗∗P < 0.01, ^∗∗∗P < 0.001, and ^∗∗∗∗P < 0.0001 by analysis of variance (ANOVA) (n = 10). PC: principal component.