Selective Plating Underestimates Abundance and Shows Differential Recovery of Bifidobacterial Species from Human Feces
Open Access
- 1 September 2003
- journal article
- Published by American Society for Microbiology in Applied and Environmental Microbiology
- Vol. 69 (9) , 5731-5735
- https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.69.9.5731-5735.2003
Abstract
The aim of the present work was to compare the efficacies and levels of selectivity of different culture-dependent and -independent methods for analyzing bifidobacteria in human stool samples. The three different culture media used here significantly differed from each other, particularly with regard to the recovery of Bifidobacterium adolescentis . Bifidobacterium medium failed to recover B. adolescentis ; Beerens medium recovered some B. adolescentis organisms (17% of total bifidobacteria), whereas tomato-Eugon medium recovered mainly B. adolescentis organisms (58% of total bifidobacteria). A culture-independent method that combines GC fractionation of bacterial community DNA and 16S rRNA sequencing indicated that B. adolescentis organisms accounted for 85% of all bifidobacteria. Methodological biases, such as those described in this paper, should be taken into account in interpreting earlier studies and designing future experiments.Keywords
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