<strong>Alterations and Correlations of Gut Microbiota and Fecal Metabolome Characteristics in a Rabbit Model of Intervertebral Disc Degeneration</strong>

Fecal DNA was extracted from 16 fecal samples (8 rabbit models with IDD and 8 sex- and age-matched healthy controls) and analyzed by high-throughput 16S rDNA sequencing. The fecal samples were also analyzed by liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS)-based metabolomics. Multivariate analyses were conducted for the relationship between the omics data and IDD, including principal coordinate analysis (PCoA), principal component analysis (PCA), orthogonal partial least-squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA), and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). Linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) was employed for biomarker discovery. Moreover, the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database was used to annotate the differential metabolites. The potential correlation between differential gut microbiota and metabolites was then assessed.本数据集的粪便样本取自16份粪便标本，其中包含8例椎间盘退变（Intervertebral Disc Degeneration, IDD）模型兔及8例性别、年龄匹配的健康对照兔。研究人员首先从上述样本中提取粪便DNA，采用高通量16S核糖体DNA（16S rDNA）测序进行分析；同时采用基于液相色谱-质谱联用（liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry, LC-MS）的代谢组学方法对粪便样本开展检测。随后针对组学数据与IDD的关联进行多变量分析，涵盖主坐标分析（Principal Coordinate Analysis, PCoA）、主成分分析（Principal Component Analysis, PCA）、正交偏最小二乘判别分析（Orthogonal Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis, OPLS-DA）及系统聚类分析（Hierarchical Cluster Analysis, HCA）。采用线性判别分析效应量（Linear Discriminant Analysis Effect Size, LEfSe）进行生物标志物筛选。此外，借助京都基因与基因组百科全书（Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes, KEGG）数据库对差异代谢物进行注释，并最终评估差异肠道菌群与代谢物之间的潜在关联。