Probiotics are alive bacteria that have a healthy effect on the hosts and are found in large quantities in the soil and foods. The most recommended probiotics as commercial are the some species of Lactobacillus sp., Bifidobacterium sp., and Streptococcus sp. The fatty acids are formed by the colonic gut flora from dietary fibres, which manage to escape the host's enzymatic digestive systems in the small intestine. Dietary fibres that manage to reach the large intestine are available for several bacterial fermentative reactions. The fermentation of the different dietary fibres leads to an increase in concentrations of several short-chain fatty acids, especially butyrate, propionate and acetate, in the lumen of the proximal regions of the large intestine. In this review, we acquainted that the relationship between fatty acids and probiotic bacteria affects some various health ailments.
What is the microbe that we are dealing with? Whether it is cholera or anthrax, we want to know the disease-causing microorganism as quickly as possible since prompt identification of the causative organism would help control disease spread - and potentially save lives through provision of appropriate care and medication. Yet, despite the advent of rapid microbial identification tools – particularly those based on mass spectrometry – most undergraduate curricula continue to focus on culture- and nucleic acid-based identification techniques since they are widely used for detecting and identifying microbes in clinical and environmental samples. Mass spectrometry-based methods, however, have increasingly complemented traditional approaches in clinical and research laboratories - but are rarely featured in undergraduate curricula. Motivated by the desire to address the curriculum gap, the author of this study developed an inquiry-based laboratory exercise for introducing students to the operating principles and methodology of mass spectrometry-based microbial identification. By requiring students to identify microbes in environmental water samples – a real-life problem with unknown answers – the exercise piqued the students’ interest in learning, while helping to stir their curiosity through an interesting field activity in which they could put on a scientist’s hat in solving a mystery. This synopsis article summarizes a piece of published educational research and expands on the discussion of concepts underlying matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS)-based microbial identification. Herein, the article discusses the relative advantages and disadvantages of the pattern recognition and proteome database search approaches for analyzing mass spectra data. Additionally, the effect of general and tailored sample preparation protocols on identification accuracy is also elaborated. Finally, the pedagogical utility of field- and inquiry-based educational tools is also discussed in greater detail from a post-publication perspective. A full-length synopsis of the work and a structured abstract can be found in the accompanying PDF file, the original article being entitled: “Teaching Microbial Identification with Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) and Bioinformatics Tools”.
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