Abstract

Background: The cecum has the highest metabolite absorption and houses the most abundant population of microbes which are responsible for maintaining homeostasis and host health. Disruption of the microbial populations in either presence or relative abundance due to various environmental and host factors can result in various disease state that do not have a standard form of medical treatment.

Materials and methods: The use of synbiotics, prebiotics, and probiotics has shown potential in treating dysbiosis. Many gut microbiota cannot be isolated by culture-dependent techniques. Culture independent, high resolution paired-end16S rRNA genomic analysis of the V3/V4 hypervariable region was used to elucidate bacterial differences under treatment.

Results: Analysis shows the establishment of probiotic strains maintaining diversity of the gut microbial flora within the cecum under the additional supplementation of prebiotics.

Conclusion: This study demonstrated a measurable phylogenetic difference in microbial community composition among controlled and symbiotic diets supporting the use of probiotics in establishing homeostatic balance of beneficial bacteria and pharmaceutically correcting a state of dysbiosis in the host.

Keywords: Paired-end; Prebiotic; Probiotic; Synbiotic; Diversity; 16S rRNA; Next-gen sequencing