Evaluation of five bifidobacterium isolates as potential probiotics and genetic analysis of their ability to withstand oxidative stress

Includes bibliographical references (p. 102-112).The diverse microbiota of the human gastrointestinal tract plays a major role in the general health of humans. A number of bacterial strains with distinctive properties have been isolated and used commercially as probiotics in order to harness these health benefits and offer them to unhealthy hosts. There are set criteria that have to be followed before new probiotics can be introduced into the market. Five Bifidobacterium isolates with extremely high sucrase activity were randomly selected from a faecal sample from a healthy donor for further characterisation as potential probiotics with the ability to utilize fructo- oligosaccharide substrates in the gut. Phylogenic identification of the isolates to the species level was carried out using sequences of the 16S rRNA gene, 16S-23S rRNA gene spacer region, the heat shock protein (hsp60) and Elongation factor Tu (tuf)