Figure 3

16S rRNA sequencing analysis of bacteria in human milk. Milk samples were collected from a lactating woman undergoing chemotherapy as described in Figure 1 as well as from eight healthy lactating women. (A) Weighted UniFrac PCoA plot. Each milk sample, represented by a coloured circle, is plotted on this three-dimensional, three-axis plane representing 84% of the variation observed between all samples. Samples that cluster together are similar in biota composition and abundance. Orange circles represent samples collected from weeks 4 to 16 of chemotherapy, blue circles represent samples collected at week 2 of chemotherapy, purple circles represent samples collected at week 0, red circles represent milk samples from healthy lactating women (only one time point) and green circles represent milk samples from a healthy lactating women collected 4-months apart. As shown by the plot, there were three distinct groups: (i) week 0 samples and healthy milk samples; (ii) week 2 of chemotherapy; and (iii) weeks 4 to 16 of chemotherapy. Data were rarified to 735 reads/sample. (B) Barplot showing the relative abundances of different genera in each sample. Each bar represents a subject and each coloured box a different genus. The height of the coloured boxes represents the relative abundance of that genus within the sample. Genera that were less than 2% abundant in a given sample were placed in the ‘Remaining fraction’ at the top of the graph (grey boxes).