Ingestion of Indigestible Cacao Proteins Promotes Defecation and Alters the Intestinal Microbiota in Mice.

Background: In animals, the health effects of ingested cacao proteins are unknown because the proteins are difficult to extract and purify from cacao beans.

Objectives: This study aimed to develop an extraction and purification method for cacao proteins and reveal the effect of ingestion of cacao proteins on defecation and intestinal microbiota in mice.

Methods: Three groups of mice were fed a control diet (AIN-93 G), a cacao lignin diet (AIN-93 G containing 1.

L233P mutation of the Tax protein strongly correlated with leukemogenicity of bovine leukemia virus.

The bovine leukemia virus (BLV) Tax protein is believed to play a crucial role in leukemogenesis by the virus. BLV usually causes asymptomatic infections in cattle, but only one-third develop persistent lymphocytosis that rarely progress after a long incubation period to lymphoid tumors, namely enzootic bovine leucosis (EBL). In the present study, we demonstrated that the BLV tax genes could be divided into two alleles and developed multiplex PCR detecting an L233P mutation of the Tax protein.