Comparison of Gut Microbiological Profiles of Inbred and Outbred Healthy Mice

TL;DR

This study compares gut microbiomes of different mouse strains and finds significant differences that should be considered in future research.

Contribution

The study reveals strain-specific differences in gut microbiology of healthy mice, emphasizing the importance of strain selection in microbiome research.

Findings

Gut microbial diversity, composition, and abundance varied significantly among the four mouse strains.

Co-abundance networks differed between inbred and outbred mouse strains.

Strain differences were found to be a critical background factor in gut microbiology studies.

Abstract

Gut microbes are closely related to host immunity and health, and mice are frequently used as a common model organism in biomedicine to study various diseases. Numerous studies based on mouse gut microbes have been conducted, but whether there are differences in the gut microbial profiles of healthy mice of different strains has not been revealed. In this study, we performed a meta‐analysis comparing four strains (inbred strains: C57BL and BALB; outbred strains: KM and ICR) of mouse healthy gut microbial 16S V3‐V4 data based on publicly available online data. We focused on microbial diversity, microbial composition, abundance differential microbiota, and co‐abundance networks. We found that the gut microbes of these four strains of mice differed in the above metrics to varying degrees. Our study found significant differences in gut microbiology among four strains of healthy mice. The strain will be a background factor that cannot be ignored in future studies of gut microbiology in mice. The impact of this factor on gut microbiology experiments should be considered.

A meta‐analysis comparing four strains (inbred strains: C57BL and BALB; outbred strains: KM and ICR) of mouse healthy gut microbial 16S V3‐V4 data based on publicly available online data.

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