Abstract
The gut microbiota can affect host health, including humans. Mouse models have been used extensively to study the relationships between the host and the gut microbiota. With the development of cost-effective high-throughput DNA sequencing, several methods have been used to identify members of the gut microbiota of laboratory mice. In recent years, the amount of research and knowledge about the mouse gut microbiota has exploded, leading to significant breakthroughs in understanding of the taxonomic composition of and variation in this community. In addition, the rapidly increasing volume of data has allowed the development of public resources for exploring the mouse gut microbiota. In this review, we describe the concepts and pros and cons of basic methodologies that can be used to determine the gut bacterial profile in laboratory mice. We also present the key bacterial components of the mouse gut microbiota from the phylum to the species level and then compare them with those identified in other references. Additionally, we discuss variations in the mouse gut microbiota and their association with experiments using mice. Finally, we summarize the properties and functions of currently available public resources for exploring the mouse gut microbiota.
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This work was supported by the Korea Institute of Planning and Evaluation for Technology in Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (IPET) funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) of Korea, Grant Number 918013–04-4-SB010. This work was also supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2014M3C9A3063541).
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All authors contributed to the conception of the article. The literature search and data analysis were performed by JY. The first draft of the manuscript was written by JY, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Yang, J., Chun, J. Taxonomic composition and variation in the gut microbiota of laboratory mice. Mamm Genome 32, 297–310 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00335-021-09871-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00335-021-09871-7