Global Diversity
According to the bioinformatics pipeline, with 100% accuracy in the
mock communities, bacterial taxa were identified correctly at the genus
level. In total, 2677 ASVs were identified, of which Bacteroidota,
Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria were the most abundant bacterial phyla,
and Prevotella , Alloprevotella , and Veillonella were the most abundant bacterial genera in the whole study population
(N=142) (Figures 3 and 4). In terms of α diversity (microbial diversity
within samples), there were no differences in the number of observed
unique ASV per sample (adjusted p-value= 0.476), Shannon index (adjusted
p-value=0.559), or CHAO1 index (adjusted p-value=0.492). Regarding the β
diversity (microbial diversity between samples), PERMANOVA models showed
significant differences in both Bray-Curtis (adjusted p-value=0.018) and
weighted UniFrac (adjusted p-value=0.039) distance measures.