the DSS group_rep5
After a one-week adaptation, female C57BL/6 mice were randomized by body weight into four experimental groups. Mice in the control group were given normal drinking water, and mice in the other three groups were given 3% dextran sulfate sodium in drinking water for 6 d, and the date of starting DSS drinking water was recorded as the first day. For the DSS-CTLA-4 group, mice were intraperitoneally injected with 100 g anti-CTLA-4 mAb on day 0, 2 and 5, respectively. Accordingly, mice in the DSS group were intraperitoneally injected with the isotype control antibody. On the basis of DSS-CTLA-4 group, the BAE-PECTIN group was given 25 mg bilberry anthocyanin extracts/kg body weight and 100 mg low molecular citrus pectin/kg body weight by intragastric administration from day 1. For the DSS-CTLA-4 group mice were given isovolumetric sterile water as the BAE-PECTIN group. All mice were sacrificed by cervical dislocation under anesthesia with Avertin at day 13, then cecal contents were collected and stored at 80 C for the following experiments. Genomic DNA was extracted from the fecal sample using the QIAamp DNA Stool Mini Kit according to the manufacturers instructions. The V3V4 hypervariable region of 16S rRNA was amplified with universal primers 338F and 806R by PCR