Fig. 1

Barley leaf (BL) attenuates dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis and gut microbiota dysbiosis. a–i Mice were fed with a standard chow diet (CD) or an isocaloric BL-supplemented diet for two weeks. Colitis was induced by administering 2.5% DSS dissolved in drinking water for 7 days. a Study design of in vivo mouse experiment. b Percentage body weight change, c diseases activity scores, d colon lengths, and e intestinal permeability of the CD- and BL-fed mice with or without DSS treatment (n = 10–12). f Weighted UniFrac Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) plot of the gut microbiota composition at the operational taxonomic unit (OTU) level from different mouse groups (n = 10). g Alpha diversity analysis of gut bacterial richness (Chao1 index) and diversity (Shannon index) from different mouse groups (n = 10). h Taxonomic distributions of gut bacterial composition at the phylum level (n = 10). i Taxonomic distributions of gut bacterial composition at the family level (n = 10). Data are pooled from three independent experiments (a-e). Data are mean ± SEM. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 and ****P < 0.0001. For body weight change, a repeated measure two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed and the rest of the statistics was performed with one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s multiple comparisons test