An overview of advanced technologies for selection of probiotics and their expediency: A review

ABSTRACT

It has become easy to identify and select an appropriate microorganism with the advancement in various molecular biology and analytical techniques. The majority of the novel techniques are being implemented for the identification and characterization of microorganisms used for probiotic application. Standard microbial techniques such as biochemical testing and culture techniques routinely used for probiotic microbes screening, identification and selection. However, these standard techniques may not give complete information on the microbes that can be used for probiotic production. Furthermore, alternative molecular and analytical techniques such as 16S and 23S ribosomal DNA sequencing, RNA analysis by reverse transcriptase (RT-PCR), fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH), quantitative analysis by real time PCR (RT-PCR or qPCR) and fluorescent activated cell sorting (FACS) are potentially used to confirm and select all types of lactic acid microorganism. All these approaches can be employed in the screening and selection of appropriate lactic acid bacteria which can be potentially used for the production of human use probiotics in large scale fermentation. This review mainly focuses on various tools and techniques used for effective screening and selection of a better candidate bacterium for probiotic applications.

KEYWORDS:

• Probiotics
• quantitative analysis
• fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH)
• real-time PCR (RT-PCR)
• fluorescent activated cell sorting (FACS)

Funding

The authors duly acknowledge the University Research Scholarship (URS) to Ruby Yadav (Ref. 10-RUR-8058) by M.D. University, Rohtak, India. The authors also acknowledge the support from SERB, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India (DST Fast Track Grant. No. SR/FT/LS-31/2012).