Figure 7.

Microbiome features associated with control are positively correlated (green) with an abundance of multiple steroids. This also extends to predicted metabolism, which only shows positive correlations with steroid levels; many of these steroids are also significantly more abundant in the control rats (*, Figure 2). This unified pattern suggests that the control gut microbiome metabolizes a range of host steroids and is negatively affected when these substrates are depleted by gonadectomy. Disruption via GDX favours an alternate cohort of bacteria, but it does not foster new predicted metabolic activities. Heatmap: colours reflect positive (green) or negative (purple) Spearman’s ρ correlations between microbial features (ASVs, predicted ECPs and biological parameters: steroids, fatty acids, Shannon’s alpha diversity). Top row (GDX effect): summarizes associations relevant to experimental design; bottom row (non-spec. effect): summarizes incidental associations which do not cluster with the main experimental effect. Right-hand margin: unit-scaled abundances, significant differences if applicable (*), and categories for biological parameters in this study (steroid, fatty acids, alpha diversity). Bottom margin: scaled abundances, and microbial taxonomy (ASVs) or pathway types (ECPs) of features. All microbial features (ASV, EC) shown here were found to differ significantly between control and GDX (FDR < 0.05).