129-Con-cecum-3
Following animal sacrifice, the feces and cecum were immediately frozen at -80C until DNA extraction. Bead beating homogenization was used to disrupt the samples, followed by DNA isolation using the QIAamp Fast DNA Stool Mini Kit (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany). The V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene was amplified via PCR using the universal primers 341F and barcoded 806R. Gel electrophoresis confirmed the PCR product amplicons, which were then purified using AMPure XT beads and quantified using Qubit dsDNA reagent. Sequencing was performed on an Illumina MiSeq platform using a paired-end 2460bp reagent kit.