Effects of diet and weight reduction on the gut microbiota. (a) Phylogenetic Diversity (PD) of the cecal samples from the four groups of mice (mean ± s.e.m. compared by two-way ANOVA) and (b) Principal Coordinates Analysis (PCoA) plot of the unweighted UniFrac distances. PC1 and PC3 values for each mouse sample are plotted; percent variation explained by each PC is shown in parentheses: DIO-AL, diet-induced obese mice: blue; DIO-WR, weight-reduced DIO: red; CON-AL, control diet-fed mice: purple; CON-WR, weight-reduced CON: green. (c) Relative abundances of the different phyla in each of the groups. The phylum Firmicutes was broken down into OTU 303, OTU 716 (which are both classified as Allobaculum), and all other Firmicutes that did not fall into these two OTUs.