Fig. 3

Non-metric dimensional scaling (NMDS) plot of the microbial communities of Crohn’s disease aphthous ulcers and adjacent mucosa, and healthy control mucosa. Non-metric dimensional scaling (NMDS) plot of the microbial 16S rRNA communities of Crohn’s disease aphthous ulcers and adjacent macroscopically normal mucosa (red squares), and mucosa from healthy controls (yellow dots). The Bray-Curtis similarity index was used to determine the distance between two points; sites positioned close together share a greater fraction of their bacterial taxa than two samples further apart. Samples do not cluster according to disease status. Patient numbers precede the tissue type labels: REC rectum, RECAU rectal aphthous ulcer, LB large bowel, LBAU large bowel aphthous ulcer, SB small bowel, SBAU small bowel aphthous ulcer, NB normal (control mucosa) biopsy. NMDS stress = 0.40