Figure 3.

Broad-spectrum oral antibiotic-conditioned mice raised under specific pathogen-free (SPF) conditions were colonized with diverse RG strains isolated from healthy and Lupus-affected human donors. The colonizing RG strains were then passed to their litters. (A) The fecal pellets of SPF-raised C57BL/6 breeding pairs were collected before initiating oral regimen of broad-spectrum antibiotics and repeated four weeks later, with total 16S rRNA genomic levels measured by qPCR analysis of extracts of fecal pellets. (B) Fecal pellets from these same mice were evaluated for levels of RG-specific genomic DNA, before and after gavage with freshly cultured RG1, RG2 and S107-48 RG strains. (C) After mating of pairs based on same RG strain, abundance of RG genomic DNA in fecal pellets of 5wk-old litters was measured in each of the control (sham colonized, 3M 3F), RG2 (4M 5F), S107-48 (4M 4F) and S47-18 (4M and 5F) strain monocolonized SPF littermates, by RG-species specific 16S rDNA genomic DNA by qPCR analysis. (Red) indicates female and (Blue) male mice are separately shown. Comparisons by unpaired t test, p values shown. Control group was gavaged with sterile PBS.