BISAC: SCI006000

This book contains novel research and laboratory techniques to study the immune cell molecular behavior and responses to soluble factors produced by probiotic bacteria and intestinal/probiotic co-cultures that will contribute to advanced scientific knowledge and the commercial development of probiotics. Such understanding will allow scientists to identify new probiotic strains with enhanced immunomodulatory effects, ascertain minimal probiotic dose requirements, distinguish the type of immunological response to probiotics and identify potential probiotic soluble factors that induce immunological reactions.

This book includes recent techniques involved in the use of adaptive immune cells with intracellular expressed fluorescent proteins acting as bio-indicators of responses to soluble factors produced by probiotic strains and intestinal/probiotic co-cultures. Research techniques on the immune cell response to the microencapsulated probiotics is described as a downstream indicator to determine changes in the behaviour of the confined probiotics. Changes in probiotic bacterial-activities from the microencapsulated environment have rarely been reported and are evaluated in this book using the transfected porcine progenitor immune cells as a downstream indicator. To date, no studies have reported any form of immunological responses (innate or adaptive) to microencapsulated probiotic bacteria. These results are compared to the responses of immune cells treated with non-microencapsulated probiotic bacteria.

This book also contains advanced fluorescence microscopy techniques to obtain real-time information from viable cells. Fluorescent proteins have been widely used as bio-indicators of cellular responses. The porcine progenitor immune cells can be transfected with the fluorescent proteins, phMGFP and pCIneo-DsRed2. Changes in fluorescence and diffusive properties of these fluorescent proteins in response to the probiotic bacterial-produced soluble factors can be imaged by LSCM and FCS, and analysed using the RICS program. These changes can be compared to the immune cellular responses to pathogen-produced soluble factors (Streptococcus pyogenes). The intracellular responses of the immune cells to the probiotics and pathogen are compared to determine if the probiotic strains exhibited similar effects on immune cellular responses.

This book is ideally suited for researchers in food and pharmaceutical industries as well as universities; postgraduate students in microbiology and immunology will also find this book to be useful. This book is suitable as a classroom textbook for advanced microbiology, bacteriology and immunology, and it is highly recommended for university and research institution libraries around the world. (Imprint: Nova Biomedical)