Fig. 1.

Experimental datasets: The 37 conditions from 14 experiments (with 17 GEO accession numbers) used in this study are detailed in a timeline based on the age of the mice. Mice are selected to be part of an experiment based on weight, hence their age can vary within a range. The stars denote the start of the intervention, an empty star indicates the range of age when the intervention starts, when the age is not the same for all the animals in the group. Triangles denote the end of the interventions, an empty triangle indicates the start of the range of age of the animals. Challenges have been divided in three categories (colour coded): Diet, Drug and Immune Challenge. The names given for each dataset are abbreviated to show the challenge category in the first part of the name, the tissue sampled at the end (SI: small intestine; C: colon) and the text in the middle indicates the nature of challenge. Additional detailed explanations for the abbreviated condition names and the control conditions are given in Additional file 1: Table S1