The impact of dietary nucleic acids on colon microbiota composition in mice

Wild-type C57BL/6 mice were fed with normal diet, purified diet (AIN-93G) with or without a supplement of 0.5% purified nucleic acids (0.25% purified salmon testes DNA and 0.25% purified yeast RNA, DNA/RNA) for 6 weeks after their weaning. Then microbial DNA was extracted from fecal samples of the indicated mice by using the QIAamp Fast DNA Stool Mini Kit. The V3-V4 regions of the bacteria 16S ribosomal RNA gene were amplified by an ABI GeneAmp 9700 PCR thermocycler (ABI) with the following primers: 338F (ACTCCTACGGGAGGCAGCA) and 806R (GGACTACHVGGGTWTCTAAT). Purified amplicons were pooled in equimolar amounts and paired-end sequenced on an Illumina MiSeq PE300 platform/NovaSeq PE250 platform (Illumina).