A synbiotic mixture of selected oligosaccharides and bifidobacteria assists murine gut microbiota restoration following antibiotic challenge.

Background: Typically, animal models studying gastrointestinal microbiotas compromised in early life have employed either germ-free animals or mice treated with a cocktail of antibiotics. Such studies intend to mimic scenarios of infants born by caesarean section and/or subjected to antibiotic treatment. However, the antibiotics used in these studies are rarely prescribed to infants.

Broad Purpose Vector for Site-Directed Insertional Mutagenesis in .

Members of the genus are notoriously recalcitrant to genetic manipulation due to their extensive and variable repertoire of Restriction-Modification (R-M) systems. Non-replicating plasmids are currently employed to achieve insertional mutagenesis in . One of the limitations of using such insertion vectors is the presence within their sequence of various restriction sites, making them sensitive to the activity of endogenous restriction endonucleases encoded by the target strain.