The rarefaction curves also revealed a trend towards a slight increase in species richness in inflamed versus non-inflamed tissues, although these difference were not significant. In agreement with these findings, using the Shannon diversity index (SDI) to Temsirolimus molecular weight measure the richness and evenness of each sample, we found that the individual non-IBD control samples generally generated the highest SDI figures and that these were significantly higher (p < 0.05) than those from both the inflamed and non-inflamed CD samples and from the non-inflamed UC samples (Figure 3B). Figure buy PFT�� 3 Measures of bacterial diversity in the mucosal biopsies. 3A) Rarefaction analysis showing number of phylotypes
observed with increasing sequencing effort across all patient cohorts. Data points show the observed diversity after each individual biopsy sample was incorporated
into the analysis. Colour-coded errors bars show 95% confidence intervals for each patient cohort. Note that, as each patient is incorporated into the analysis, the gap between the number of phylotypes observed in non-IBD patients compared to IBD patients grows larger. The reduction in species richness appeared to be particularly significant Selleck Talazoparib in CD patients. Number of sequences per sample: Non-IBD controls = 252-489, CD Inflamed = 248-342, CD Non-inflamed = 287-445, UC Inflamed = 267-469, UC Non-inflamed = 286-499. 3B) Mean Shannon diversity indices (SDI) calculated from the individual biopsies for each sample type. Significantly reduced SDI compared to non-IBD control samples are indicated by * (p = < 0.05). Error bars indicate standard deviation from the mean. Bacterial community structure comparisons We next wanted to test whether or not the biopsy samples grouped together by disease cohort, by individual or both. Cluster analysis using both the Jaccard coefficient and PCoA showed that the samples clustered together according to donor (Figures 4 and 5) and that there was no separation between the CD, UC and non-IBD cohorts. There was also no separation many based upon the location of
biopsy sampling. This suggests that, despite differences in bacterial community composition and diversity between IBD and non-IBD samples, inter-individual variation is a stronger determinant of overall gut bacterial composition than disease. Despite this, although the paired samples clustered together, the branch lengths in the dendrogram were longer than might be expected if the community structure was highly similar between paired biopsies, indicating that there were still significant differences between the inflamed and non-inflamed tissues. Figure 4 Cluster dendrogram generated using the Jaccard coefficient, illustrating relationship between bacterial species membership and biopsy type across all samples included in the study. Crohn’s disease patients are indicated by numbers CD1-CD6.