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Fig. 2 | Microbiome

Fig. 2

From: Impact of prematurity and nutrition on the developing gut microbiome and preterm infant growth

Fig. 2

a–i Functional capacity of microbiota phases. The functional capacity of the microbiota present in each sample was inferred using PICRUSt (Phylogenetic Investigation of Communities by Reconstruction of Unobserved States) [63]. Each gray panel corresponds to one function and each point within a gray panel represents one sample. The samples are stratified by phase along the x axis, with red circles corresponding to P1, orange triangles corresponding to P2, and green squares corresponding to P3 samples. The sample position on the y axis indicates the relative abundance of the specified KEGG pathway, calculated as the fraction of times functional components of that pathway occurs across all organisms in the sample, with the contribution of each organism weighted by its relative abundance. Within each phase, samples are plotted on top of a box plot, which is centered on the median, with notches indicating an approximately 95% confidence interval, boxes indicating the boundaries of the first and third quartiles, and whiskers extending to the largest and smallest values no further than 1.5*(inter-quartile range) from the boxes. Points beyond the whiskers are outliers. If the notches of two boxes within the same gray panel do not overlap on the y axis, there is strong evidence that the true medians differ [69]. Functional pathways that are differentially enriched among the three phases include those that contribute to the degradation of phthalates on NICU medical devices (bisphenol degradation), protection against oxidative stress (carotenoid biosynthesis), microbiota driven increases in lipopolysaccharide (LPS) concentrations (lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis), short-chain fatty acids (fatty acid biosynthesis), isoquinoloine alkaloid biosynthesis, glycolysis and gluconeogenesis, glycan biosynthesis and metabolism, membrane transport and translation

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