What happens to Bifidobacterium adolescentis and Bifidobacterium longum ssp. longum in an experimental environment with eukaryotic cells?

Background The impact of probiotic strains on host health is widely known.

The available studies on the interaction between bacteria and the host are focused on the changes induced by bacteria in the host mainly.

The studies determining the changes that occurred in the bacteria cells are in the minority.

Within this paper, we determined what happens to the selected Bifidobacterium adolescentis and Bifidobacterium longum ssp. longum in an experimental environment with the intestinal epithelial layer.

For this purpose, we tested the bacteria cells' viability, redox activity, membrane potential and enzymatic activity in different environments, including CaCo-2/HT-29 co-culture, cell culture medium, presence of inflammatory inductor (TNF-α) and oxygen.

Results We indicated that the external milieu impacts the viability and vitality of bacteria.

Bifidobacterium adolescentis decrease the size of the live population in the cell culture medium with and without TNF-α ( p  < 0.001 and p  < 0.01 respectively).

In contrast, Bifidobacterium longum ssp. longum significantly increased survivability in contact with the eukaryotic cells and cell culture medium ( p  < 0.001).

Bifidobacterium adolescentis showed significant changes in membrane potential, which was decreased in the presence of eukaryotic cells ( p  < 0.01), eukaryotic cells in an inflammatory state ( p  < 0.01), cell culture medium ( p  < 0.01) and cell culture medium with TNF-α ( p  < 0.05).

In contrast, Bifidobacterium longum ssp. longum did not modulate membrane potential.

Instead, bacteria significantly decreased the redox activity in response to milieus such as eukaryotic cells presence, inflamed eukaryotic cells as well as the culture medium ( p  < 0.001).

The redox activity was significantly different in the cells culture medium vs the presence of eukaryotic cells ( p  < 0.001).

The ability to β-galactosidase production was different for selected strains: Bifidobacterium longum ssp. longum indicated 91.5% of positive cells, whereas Bifidobacterium adolescentis 4.34% only.

Both strains significantly reduced the enzyme production in contact with the eukaryotic milieu but not in the cell culture media.

Conclusion The environmental-induced changes may shape the probiotic properties of bacterial strains.

It seems that the knowledge of the sensitivity of bacteria to the external environment may help to select the most promising probiotic strains, reduce research costs, and contribute to greater reproducibility of the obtained probiotic effects.

• External/experimental milieu impacts the viability and vitality of bacteria.

• Bacteria differ in their response to the environments.

• Environmental-induced changes may shape the probiotic properties of bacterial strains.

• The knowledge of the sensitivity of bacteria to the external environment may help to select the most promising probiotic strains, reduce research costs, and contribute to greater reproducibility of the obtained probiotic effects.