Effect of high fat diet on the gut microbiota in rats

The gut microbiota is emerging as a new factor in the development of obesity. Many studies have described changes in microbiota composition in response to obesity and high fat diet (HFD) at the phylum level. In this study we used 16s RNA high throughput sequencing on faecal samples from rats chronically fed HFD or chow control (n=10 per group, 16 weeks) to investigate changes in gut microbiota composition at the species level.