Figure 1. Young and aged mice are distinctive at the beta-diversity level using UniFrac metric.

(A) Principal coordinates analysis using unweighted UniFrac distance on 16S sequences from fecal microbiota of young (2 months, blue) and aged (26 months, green) mice showing there are distinct phylogenetic differences in the gut microbiome between young and aged mice. Ellipses represent 95% confidence intervals. (B) Within-age-group beta-diversity is significantly lower than the between-age-group diversity, indicating that the composition of gut microbiomes from aged mice significantly differs from those of young mice (taxon abundance weighted and unweighted UniFrac; p < 0.01, Bonferroni corrected non-parametric t-tests’).