• intestinal microbiology

We appreciate the comment and discussion from Dr Cao1 and colleagues on our original article.2

We agree with Cao et al that gnotobiotic mice would help rule out the influence of indigenous microbiota. In this study, we carried out the transplantation experiment in a specific-pathogen-free (SPF) environment under the well-described cohousing3 condition. Thus, both the control and the experimental groups shared same gut ecosystem before transplantation (described in our original article). Second, in our original paper, we pretreated the mice with antibiotics to erase the pre-existing gut microbiota. Such procedure did not change the impact on spermatogenesis (Supplementary figure S6 in our original article). We avoided the extensive use of such procedure because it could potentially elicit obesity and insulin resistance, and thus, complicate …