Figure 5.

Dynamic nature of diet, host and microbiota interactions. Gut microbiota rapidly reconfigure with highly individual kinetics among taxa upon environmental changes such as different housing conditions or changes in diet. Some bacterial taxa such as the Barnesiella species illustrated in the upper left panel are present in the microbiota of one specific vendor versus another [compare B6J (blue line) and 129J (red line) from Jackson to 129T (green line) from Taconic Farms]. In this example, this microbial species in the two Jackson-bred strains is rapidly lost in the new environment, but the rate of loss depends on the diet with faster kinetics upon high fat diet feeding versus chow diet (dashed versus solid lines). Other bacterial taxa such as Barnesiella intestinihominis or Lachnospiraceae Butyrivibrio are absent from all the vendor bred mice, but rapidly colonize the gut upon introduction into a common new environment. In the case of B. intestinihominis (upper right panel) the microbe only colonizes in the chow diet fed group, whereas with Lachnospiraceae Butyrivibrio (lower left panel) colonization occurs only in the HFD fed group. Some taxa, such as a specific OTU of the Eubacteriaceae (lower right panel) colonize the gut upon introduction into a new environment independent of type of the diet, but specific to a single genetic background, in this case B6J. Thus, the association of certain groups of microbiota with specific host phenotypes is the result of a complex interaction of host genetics and various environmental factors at a specific time.