Fecal samples were collected and stored at −80°C prior to analysis. The standard PowerSoil kit protocol was used to extract bacterial genomic DNA. Briefly, the frozen samples were thawed on ice and then pulverized with a pestle and mortar in liquid nitrogen, we added MoBio lysis buffer to these fecal samples and then mixed them, and after centrifuging, we placed the obtained supernatant into MoBio garnet-bead tubes containing MoBio buffer. Extracted V3–V5 regions of the 16S rRNA gene from these fecal samples were amplified by polymerase chain reaction with bar-coded universal primers containing linker sequences for pyrosequencing.21 (link) The 454 sequencing system (Hoffman-La Roche, Basel, Switzerland) was used.