Browsing by Subject "growth medium"

The porcine gut microbiome is a complex mixture of diverse microbes. During some diseases, the microbial balance of the gut can be disturbed, and harmful bacteria might multiply to concentrations that are harmful to health. To restore balance, the increase of beneficial bacteria that have probiotic potential plays a big role in avoiding the use of antibiotics. In order to develop a probiotic product containing these beneficial bacteria, it is necessary to concretely isolate them from a fecal sample. In this pilot study, the aim was to find an optimal selective growth medium that would allow to grow bacterial species with probiotic properties serving as a potential product in pigs and which would reduce the growth of redundant bacteria. A total of 12 different media were tested with four different sole carbon sources in M9 minimal salts, of which four being supplemented with volatile fatty acids were further tested. The results suggest that cellobiose or xylose could be the best alternatives of the investigated carbon sources for the species of interest. In addition, it was found that certain volatile fatty acids can inhibit the growth of Escherichia coli and several species of the genus Bacteroides.