Abstract
BackgroundBifidobacteria are important probiotics; some of the beneficial effects of bifidobacteria are achieved by the hydrolysis of glycans in the human gut. However, because the diet of breastfed infants typically lacks plant-derived glycans, in the gut environment of mothers and their breastfed infants, the mother will intake a variety of plant-derived glycans, such as from onions and bananas, through her diet. Under this assumption, we are interested in whether the same species of bifidobacteria isolated from mother-infant pairs present a distinction in their hydrolysis of plant-derived carbohydrates.ResultsAmong the 36 Bifidobacterium strains, bifidobacterial carbohydrate utilization showed two trends related to the intestinal environment where the bacteria lived. Compared with infant-type bifidobacterial strains, adult-type bifidobacterial strains preferred to use plant-derived glycans. Of these strains, 10 isolates, 2 Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum (B. pseudocatenulatum), 2 Bifidobacterium pseudolongum (B. pseudolongum), 2 Bifidobacterium bifidum (B. bifidum), 2 Bifidobacterium breve (B. breve), and 2 Bifidobacterium longum (B. longum), were shared between the mother-infant pairs. Moreover, the repetitive sequence-based polymerase chain reaction (rep-PCR) results illustrated that B. pseudolongum and B. bifidum showed genotypic similarities of 95.3 and 98.2%, respectively. Combined with the carbohydrate fermentation study, these results indicated that the adult-type strains have a stronger ability to use plant-derived glycans than infant-type strains. Our work suggests that bifidobacterial carbohydrate metabolism differences resulted in the selective adaptation to the distinct intestinal environment of an adult or breastfed infant.ConclusionsThe present study revealed that the different gut environments can lead to the differences in the polysaccharide utilization in the same strains of bifidobacterial strains, suggesting a further goal of investigating the exact expression of certain enzymes in response to specific carbon sources.
Highlights
Bifidobacteria are important probiotics; some of the beneficial effects of bifidobacteria are achieved by the hydrolysis of glycans in the human gut
The use of bifidobacterial strains Bifidobacteria isolates were isolated from 20 pairs of mother-infant fecal samples; in total, there were 36 bifidobacterial isolates (Table 1); B. pseudocatenulatum (n = 12), B. pseudolongum (n = 9), B. bifidum (n = 7), B. breve (n = 4), B. longum (n = 4)
These 5 pairs of isolates were present in mother feces (n = 5) and infant feces (n = 5): 2 B. pseudocatenulatum, 2 B. longum, 2 B. breve, 2 B. bifidum, and 2 B. pseudolongum
Summary
Bifidobacteria are important probiotics; some of the beneficial effects of bifidobacteria are achieved by the hydrolysis of glycans in the human gut. Because the diet of breastfed infants typically lacks plantderived glycans, in the gut environment of mothers and their breastfed infants, the mother will intake a variety of plant-derived glycans, such as from onions and bananas, through her diet. Under this assumption, we are interested in whether the same species of bifidobacteria isolated from mother-infant pairs present a distinction in their hydrolysis of plant-derived carbohydrates. Because breastfed infants and their mothers ingest completely different glycans [9, 11], it is worth investigating whether the same species of bifidobacteria isolated from mother-infant pairs present similarities in the utilization of plant carbohydrates. Some studies have only assessed which species of oligosaccharides are utilized by bifidobacteria [15], and little is known about the carbohydrate metabolism of bifidobacteria in relation to the mother-infant pairs
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