Biotechnology, applications and prospects of lactic acid probiotic bacteria

The benefits of consuming fermented milk made sour by lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are known since the early days of civilization. LAB are those bacteria that produce lactic acid as the major or sole fermentation product. As early as 1908, Dr. Elie Metchnikoff has proposed a link between the consumption of positive acting bacteria (probiotic) and better health and longer life. Probiotics are viable microorganisms incorporated to food that benefits the host when consumed by improving the hosts' indigenous intestinal microflora. This lecture reviews the classification/taxonomy, biotechnology, applications and the author's own researches on LAB and probiotic bacteria. Results of the author's own researches on LAB isolated locally showed that they are highly diverse and points to the need to discriminate them using chemosystematic and/or nucleic acid based methods and that species and strains found locally be preserved and maintained as a collection for their potential use in foods, feeds and pharmaceutical industries. Probiotic dairy product research and development should aim for the probiotics to partly replace antibiotics and the elucidation of their cultural requirements to ensure their viability in new probiotic products being developed. The author also pointed out the need for stringent quality control on the identity of the probiotic microorganism(s) present and their viable counts in the probiotic food products, food supplements and health drinks that are now marketed locally. It is claimed that for the consumer to obtain the claimed health benefits, the products must have at least 10 E 6 CFU/ml or per g viable count at the time of consumption because the minimum recommended dose is 10 E 8 to 10 E 9 cells which is attainable through consumption of 100g probiotic products with 10 E 6 to 10 E 7 viable cells per ml or per g.