Research Paper Volume 5, Issue 12 pp 902—912

Figure 4. Age-related trajectory of gut microbiome functions.

a, PCoA of Euclidean distances between KEGG KO profiles. Subjects are colored as in Figure 1. b, The position of each fecal microbiome along PC1, which described the largest amount of variation (82.5%) in the dataset, was plotted against age. Each circle is a subject colored as in Figure 1. PC1 was significantly related with age. c, Average (± SEM, error bar) PC1 coordinates obtained for functional cluster of KO genes, corresponding to KEGG pathways, used for building the PCoA. In this way pathways are ordered for: (1) negative value of PC1 coinciding with high concordance with ageing profile; (2) value of PC1 close to 0 coinciding with constant presence in the dataset; (3) positive value of PC1 coinciding with high concordance with the healthy adult profile.