Fig. 4

Sex-specific characterization of the gut microbiota using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Alpha diversity as revealed by the Sobs (a) and Shannon (b) index was compared between male and female mice fed either a chow diet or high-fat diet. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. c Bray-Curtis-based nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) analysis displayed a distinct separation between samples from male and female mice. d LEfSe analysis identified the taxa with the most differential abundant between male and female mice. Taxa enriched in females were indicated by a positive LDA score (blue), while taxa enriched in males were indicated by a negative LDA score (red)