Composition of duodenal and fecal microbiota from mice fed with diets containing different iron doses Raw sequence reads. Microbial metabolite signaling is required for systemic iron homeostasis.

We investigated whether dietary iron alters microbiota composition. To ensure a uniform and normalized microbiota composition, we first cohoused 4-6-week-old mice by feeding standard chow diet for 14 days (weeks 1& 2). Their diet was switched to iron-enriched (350 ppm) diet for 14 days (weeks 3& 4). Then the mice were divided into two iron diet groups for the next 14 days (weeks 5& 6): group 1 was maintained on iron-enriched (350 ppm) diet and group 2 was fed with iron-deficient diet (<5-ppm). We examined the effect of dietary iron on the gut microbiota by collecting feces at the baseline (after completion of co-housing; at the end of week 2), at the completion iron enrichment by 350-ppm diet (at the end of week 4) and the end of the iron manipulation (at the end of week 6) followed by determining the microbiota composition by Illumina 16S rRNA gene sequencing.