Figure 3

Vaginal core microbiome compositions at phylum level in prepubertal and sexually mature minipigs. DNA was extracted from vaginal swab samples and 16 s rRNA gene sequencing (300 bp paired end) was performed on an Illumina MiSeq platform. The resulting sequences that passed quality assurance were assigned to bacterial sequences in the M5rna database with MG-RAST. The core microbiome (those OTUs that were present in 90% of the samples) was analysed and the relative abundance of OTUs was calculated in the different samples. Each column represents the mean abundance in the ten minipigs assigned to each group. The vaginal core microbiome is dominated by Firmicutes in both prepubertal and sexually mature minipigs, followed by Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Bacteriodetes.