Administration of Lactobacillus casei and Lactobacillus plantarum affects the diversity of murine intestinal lactobacilli, but not the overall bacterial community structure.

Lactobacilli are normal inhabitants of the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) of many mammalian hosts. Their administration as probiotics in functional foods is currently a frequent practice, mainly because of their benefits to host health. It is therefore of interest to study the impact of administration of exogenous strains of Lactobacillus normally used as probiotics upon endogenous microbial populations. For this purpose, fecal and intestinal tissue samples were analyzed in a mouse model fed with a mixture of Lactobacillus plantarum and Lactobacillus casei isolated from commercially available dairy products. The murine intestinal microbiota was studied by means of cultivation-independent 16S rRNA gene-targeted techniques, namely denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE), terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and sequence analysis of clone libraries. Multivariate statistical analysis was used to integrate datasets obtained from the different techniques applied. Whereas no differences were detected in the composition of the overall fecal bacterial community, changes were observed for intestinal tissue samples. Moreover, an increase in the diversity of gut lactobacilli was observed in fecal as well as intestinal tissue samples when mice received the mixture of L. casei and L. plantarum.