Probiotics are live, microbial cells with several beneficial health effects on humans. The beneficial effect of probiotics mainly depends on their survival in the gastrointestinal tract. The health-promoting properties of certain LAB inhabiting the human gastrointestinal tract encouraged the food industry to develop new functional food products containing probiotic. Selection of a microbial strain for the incorporation into food products requires both in vitro and in vivo evaluations
Human breast milk microbiota is essential for infant immune system development, maturation and
protection against infection. However, there is scarce information on the fluid’s microbiological
composition from Malaysia. The objective of the study was to isolate, identify and characterise commensal
bacterial population present in human breast milk from Malaysia. One hundred bacteria were isolated
from the human breast milk of healthy lactating women (n=30). After preliminary screening, 20 isolates
were characterised using both phenotypic and molecular techniques. The results indicated that most
frequently identified bacteria in this study were E. faecalis and S. hominis. These organisms alongside E.
cloacae were all metabolised D-Maltose, Sucrose, D-Turanose, α-D-Glucose, D-Fructose, D-Mannose,
D-Galactose, D-sorbitol and D-Mannitol and were able to grow at pH 5 and 6, 1% sodium lactate, 1%,
2% and 8% NaCl. BLAST showed over 99% similarity to those deposited in Genbank. Phylogeneticrelatedness
was depicted using neighbour-joining method and had two clades with 100% bootstrap. These
findings provided insight into the nature, characteristics and also phylogenetic-relatedness of bacteria
present in human milk from Malaysia. Isolation and identification of commensal bacteria from human
milk are considered the first step for future studies on the benefit of these organisms towards human health.
Palm kernel cake (PKC), a by-product of the palm oil industry is limited in its use as a feed ingredient for poultry due to its high fibre and lignin content. The presence of these antinutritive components is the result of shells contaminating the by-product. The nutritive value of PKC has to be improved in order to increase its inclusion rate in poultry diet. In this study, PKC was subjected to a separation method using static cling and electrostatic separation to removethe shells present in PKC. Response surface methodology based on Box-Behnken design was used to optimize the separation method with moisture content (8 to 18%), particle size distribution (0.5 to 2.5 mm) and feed rate (20 to 200 g/min) as the independent variables evaluated. According to the regression coefficients and significance of the quadratic polynomial model, the optimum separation parameters were as follows: 13% PKC moisture content;
Bacterial adherence to connective tissue, especially to collagen has been vastly known for their invasive and infectious activities. However, the ability to exploit the unique and specific interactions between bacteria and collagen as a novel approach in detection of placental collagen has never been explored. This study aimed to determine bacteria with binding specificity to placental collagen (Type IV) derived from human and sheep. In order to do this, total bacteria from small intestines of pig and cow were isolated and their ability to bind to Type IV placental collagen (human and sheep) was determined. Interestingly, three bacterial samples; P5, P9 (pig small intestine origin) and B7 (cow small intestine origin) were found to be able to bind strongly to the placental collagen. The bacterial binding to human placental collagen was however, diminished after the bacteria were treated with trypsin, proteinase K (for removal of surface protein) and guanidine hydrochloride (for S-layer removal), suggesting that the interaction of these bacteria to placental collagen was promoted by protein(s) present at the bacterial surface. In addition, significant reduction of placental collagen-binding ability of the bacteria pre-incubated with soluble human placental collagen showed that there is a specific interaction between the bacteria and collagen. P5, P9 and B7 bacteria were found to share 95-97% 16S rRNA sequence similarity to Enterococcus faecalis ZL, Enterococcus hirae ss33b and Enterococcus faecium M3-1, respectively. The results presented here may facilitate future studies in identifying bacterial surface protein(s) responsible for the specific binding of bacteria to collagen and opens new opportunity to utilize the protein(s) for the detection of placental collagen in nutraceutical and food supplements.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of a synbiotics between Lactobacillus plantarum and mannan-oligosaccharides (MOS) extract and probiotics (Lactobacillus plantarum) on growth performance in red hybrid tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus x Oreochromis.niloticus). The fishes with initial average weight 11.9 ± 0.7g were randomly assigned to three dietary treatments which were fed on a diet containing probiotics only and a diet combination of probiotics and prebiotic (synbiotics), with four replicates for each treatment. The control group was fed without supplementation of any probiotics or prebiotics for the same duration. All the diets were isocaloric and isonitrogenous. All fish were fed daily at 3% of the body weight per day in two equal instalments. The feeding rate was kept at 4% body weight day-1 for the whole rearing period of 30 days, and the amount of feed was adjusted every tenth day following a bulk weighing of each group of fish. All diets contained about 32% of crude protein. Significantly (P < 0.05) high growth performance (percent gain body weight, weight gain and feed intake) were observed in the group fed diet containing synbiotics as compared to probiotics and control group. Similarly, significantly (P < 0.05) low FCR was recorded in synbiotics as compared to probiotics and control group. This result revealed that a feeding regime with synbiotics for 30 days led to a significant increase in growth performance, survival rate and feeding efficiency in red hybrid tilapia fingerlings.
The purpose of this study was to improve the survival of Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis 10140 during freeze-drying process by microencapsulation, using a special pediatric prebiotics mixture (galactooligosaccharides and fructooligosaccharides). Probiotic microorganisms were encapsulated with a coat combination of prebiotics-calcium-alginate prior to freeze-drying. Both encapsulated and free cells were then freeze-dried in their optimized combinations of skim milk and prebiotics. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to produce a coating combination as well as drying medium with the highest cell viability during freeze-drying. The optimum encapsulation composition was found to be 2.1 % Na-alginate, 2.9 % prebiotic, and 21.7 % glycerol. Maximum survival predicted by the model was 81.2 %. No significant (p > 0.05) difference between the predicted and experimental values verified the adequacy of final reduced models. The protection ability of encapsulation was then examined over 120 days of storage at 4 and 25 °C and exposure to a sequential model of infantile GIT conditions including both gastric conditions (pH 3.0 and 4.0, 90 min, 37 °C) and intestinal conditions (pH 7.5, 5 h, 37 °C). Significantly improved cell viability showed that microencapsulation of B. lactis 10140 with the prebiotics was successful in producing a stable symbiotic powdery nutraceutical.
Efflux-mediated resistance has been recognized as an important contributor of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, especially in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolates. This study was carried out to detect and analyze efflux genes (norA and mdeA) and active efflux activity in a collection of Malaysian MRSA and methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) clinical isolates. Nineteen isolates including three ATCC S. aureus reference strains were subjected to PCR detection and DNA sequence analysis for norA and mdeA and active efflux detection using modified minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) assay. From the 19 isolates, 18 isolates harboured the mdeA gene while 16 isolates contained norA gene. DNA sequence analysis reveals 98-100% correlation between the PCR product and the published DNA sequences in GenBank. In addition, 16 isolates exhibited active efflux activity using the ethidium bromide (EtBr)-reserpine combination MIC assay. To our knowledge, this is the first report on the detection of efflux genes and active efflux activity amongst Malaysian clinical isolates of MRSA/MSSA. Detection of active efflux activity may explain the previous report on efflux-mediated drug resistance profile amongst the local clinical isolates.