Intestinal microecology in mice bearing diethylnitrosamine-induced primary hepatocellular carcinoma

To explore the characteristics of intestinal microecology in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) model mice. C57BL/6 male mice aged 2 weeks were divided into normal control group and HCC model group. Mice in HCC model group were exposed to a single intraperitoneal injection of diethylnitrosamine (DEN) 2 weeks after birth; the surviving mice were intraperitoneally injected with 1,4-bis[2-(3,5-dichloropyridyloxy)]benzene (TCPOBOP), once every 2 weeks for 8 times starting from the 4 week after birth. Mice in each group were randomly selected and sacrificed at 10 , 18 and 32 weeks after birth, respectively, the liver tissue samples were obtained for histopathological examination. At the 32 week, all mice in both groups were sacrificed and the feces samples were collected under sterile conditions right before the sacrifice. The feces samples were sequenced for the V3-V4 hypervariable regions of the 16S rRNA gene, and the species abundance, flora diversity and phenotype, as well as flora correlation and functional prediction were analyzed. Alpha diversity analysis showed that all Good's coverage reached the maximum value of 1.00, and the differences in the Observed features, Chao1 index, Shannon index and Simpson index of the intestinal flora of mice between normal control group and HCC model group were all statistically significant (all 0, confirming that the intra-group differences of the samples were less than the inter-group differences; the trend of separation between the two groups was significant (