Figure 6.

Overall study design. Both Il10^-/- and C57 mice were fed AIN-76A diet from the time of arrival (34 ± 3 days of age), and were randomly divided into five treatment groups with five animals per group. One group of mice was housed in SPF conditions, a second group was maintained under conventional conditions (C), while the remaining groups were kept in conventional conditions and orally inoculated (200 μl) with solutions containing either the 12 strains of Enterococcus listed in Table 1 (EF), conventional intestinal flora (CIF) derived from healthy age-matched C57 mice raised under conventional conditions, or a combination of the two (EF·CIF). Inoculation was performed at approximately 5.5 weeks of age, and tissue sampling at 12 weeks of age.