Fig. 4

Box-whisker plots of the three sphingolipid metabolic pathways that distinguish four fecal microbiome profiles. The relative abundance of a ko00600, b ko00603, and c ko00604 pathways were consistently higher in infants with Bacteroides-dominant microbiome profile compared to the others (all q < 0.001). The four fecal microbiota profiles were derived using partitioning around medoids clustering method with Bray–Curtis distance. The optimal number of clusters was identified by the use of gap statistic. The horizontal line represents the median; the bottom and the top of the box represent the 25th and the 75th percentiles; whiskers represent 5 and 95% percentiles. BCP Bacteroides-dominant profile, BFP Bifidobacterium-dominant profile, ESP Escherichia-dominated profile, EVP Enterobacter/Veillonella-dominant profile