Fig. 2. Measuring the stability of an individual’s fecal microbiota over time with LEA-Seq.
(A) The Jaccard Index (fraction of shared strains) was calculated between all possible pairwise combinations of fecal samples collected from each individual, where bacterial strains were considered shared if the nucleotide sequence was 100% identical across 100% of the length of the V1V2 region of their 16S rRNA genes. Jaccard Indexes were binned into intervals of <3 weeks, 3–6 weeks, 6–9 weeks, 9–12 weeks, 12–32 weeks, 32–52 weeks, 52–104 weeks, 104–156 weeks, 156–208 weeks, 208–260 weeks, and >260 weeks apart (mean±SE for each bin is shown). The decay in the Jaccard Index as a function of time between two samples best fits a power law (blue line). (B) Four individuals losing 10% of their body weight in the study involving consumption of a monotonous low calorie liquid diet (magenta) had significantly less stable microbiota than the mean of the 33 remaining individuals (blue). Mean±SE for the Jaccard Index are plotted. (C) At the phylum level, Bacteroidetes (blue) and Actinobacteria (red) were more stable components of the microbiota than the Proteobacteria and Firmicutes (hypergeometric distribution).