Bifidobacteria, which represent common commensals of mammalian gut, are believed to have positive effects on human health. The influence of certain non-digestible carbohydrates (and their use as so-called prebiotics) on growth and metabolic activity of bifidobacteria is of increasing interest; however, mechanisms of transcriptional control of carbohydrate metabolism are poorly understood in the...

Article history: Received 15 February 2008 Revised 22 July 2008 Accepted 19 August 2008 The study addresses the first two weeks of piglet weaning and is aimed at i) identifying new probiotic strains of Bifidobacterium spp. and non-digestible oligosaccharides (NDO) able to increase the level of autochthonous bifidobacteria in the gut, and ii) finding the best probiotic doses, and probiotic-NDO c...

The population dynamics of bifidobacteria in human feces during raffinose administration were investigated at the species level by using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) coupled with flow cytometry (FCM) analysis. Although double-staining FISH-FCM using both fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) and indodicarbocyanine (Cy5) as labeling dyes for fecal samples has been reported, the analysis...

Introduction Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), considered the leading cause of chronic liver disease in children, can often progress from non-alcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). It is clear that obesity is one of the main risk factors involved in NAFLD pathogenesis, even if specific mechanisms have yet to be elucidated. We investigated the distribution...

In this study, twenty six (26) strains of bifidobacteria isolated from different origin were identified and characterized. The identification of isolates was based on phenotypic proprieties, the carbohydrates fermentation profiles and the Fructose-6-phosphoketolase test. Results showed that B. thermophilum was the predominant species (53.8%). The other strains were identified as B. bifidum (19....