Fig. 12
Abundance of probiotic bacterial strains within the small intestine. Quantification of individual probiotic strains (A) and average combined probiotic (B) in C57Bl/6 male mice on high-fat (HF) diet exposed to diesel exhaust particles (DEP- 35 μg PM) or saline control (CON) twice a week for four weeks with a subset of mice given 0.3 g/day (~ 7.5 × 107 cfu/day) of Ecologic® Barrier probiotics (PRO) in the drinking water throughout the exposures. Quantification of probiotic strains was performed using sequences clustered into operational taxonomic units (OTUs) based on 99% similarity identity, then the V4 region 16S rRNA gene bacterial samples were aligned as a query via global alignment against a database constructed of the 16S rRNA sequences for the probiotics used in the study. Data are depicted as ± SEM with *p < 0.05 compared to HF + CON, †p < 0.05 compared to HF + DEP, and ‡p < 0.05 compared to HF + CON + DEP by two-way ANOVA