Analysis of the human intestinal microbiota from 92 volunteers after ingestion of identical meals.

The intestinal microbiota composition of 92 volunteers living in Japan was identified following the consumption of 'identical meals' (1,879 kcal/day) for 3 days. When faecal samples were analysed by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism with several primer-restriction enzyme systems and then clustered, the patterns could be divided into 2 clusters. Contribution tests and partition modelling showed that OTU211 of the 35f-MspI system and OTU237 of the 35f-AluI system were key factors in the distribution of these groups. However, significant differences among these groups in terms of body mass index and age were not observed.