Fig. 3

Predicting mouse chronologic age based on gut microbiota using Random Forests. a Heat map of the mean relative abundance of age-discriminatory OTUs selected by the Boruta algorithm for the AL diet group. Rows represent the OTUs and columns represent the sampling day (Age). Hierarchical clustering on the left was based on complete linkage and Euclidean distance. Importance Z-scores from the Boruta alogrithm are plotted on the right. A large importance Z-score indicates stronger ability of corresponding OTU to discriminate chronological age. Green and yellow colors indicate the significance level (‘confirmed’ and ‘tentative’, respectively). b Predicting the age of the microbiota samples from the other diet groups using samples from the LF group as the training set. The y axis represents the predicted age (microbiota age) by Random Forests. Colors represent individual diet groups. Mice under dietary restriction (LF-RF and TLF-RF groups before the reintroduction of the ad libitum diet) exhibited lower microbiota ages than AL mice