Effect of Duyun Compound Green Tea on Gut Microbiota Diversity in High-Fat-Diet-Induced Mice Revealed by Illumina High-Throughput Sequencing

Abstract

Intake of a high-fat diet (HFD) is closely related to disorders of the intestinal microbiota, which plays a key role in the pathogenesis of obesity. Duyun compound green tea, an ancient Chinese drink, is widely consumed to reduce weight, although the mechanism is not clear. In this study, 50 mice were randomly divided into 5 groups: normal control group (CK), HFD model control group (NK), positive control group with medicine (YK), low-dose compound tea group (DL), and high-dose compound tea group (DH). After 4 weeks of intervention, the feces of mice were taken under sterile conditions and evaluated using Illumina high-throughput sequencing technology. The results showed that the diversity of intestinal microbiota was the highest in the CK group, the lowest in the NK group, and relatively increased in the compound tea treatment group. Second, there were differences in intestinal microbiota in each group, among which the beneficial bacteria in the intestinal tract of the CK group were higher than those in the other groups, while the beneficial bacteria in each compound tea treatment group were more abundant than those in the NK group, in which harmful bacteria in the intestinal tract were found to be the highest. These results suggest that compounds in tea may be able to attenuate imbalances of intestinal microbiota induced by poor diet, acting as a therapeutic agent in obesity or other diseases associated with gut dysbiosis.

Figure 1

OTUs' Venn diagram. Each petal represents a group, the number on the petal represents the number of species unique to the group, and the middle circle represents the number of species shared by all groups.

Figure 2

Rarefaction curves in the figure show the number of sequences per sample and the ordinate is the number of OTUs. The results showed that the increasing speed and trend of new species were observed with the increase of sequencing depth.

Figure 3

Chao1 index and Shannon index indicate species diversity of the samples. The box chart represents the minimum value, the lower quartile, the median, the upper quartile, and the maximum value from the bottom to the top.

Figure 4

PCoA diagram of samples at the genus level of intestinal microbiota.

Figure 5

UPGMA tree diagram of samples.

Figure 6

Structure of the microbial community and abundance changes at phylum level. The abscissa in the figure is the sample component, and the ordinate represents the sample richness. Different bacterial groups are represented by different colors.

Figure 7

LEfSE diagram of the significant taxonomies between groups. The vertical coordinate is the species groups with significant differences between groups, and the horizontal coordinate is the bar graph to show the LDA difference analysis of each species group. The scores (LDA value is greater than 3) are sorted according to the scores, so as to describe their differences in different groups of samples. The longer the length is, the more significant the difference will be. The different colors of the bar chart indicate the sample groups with higher abundance.