Fructooligosaccharides: From Breast Milk Components to Potential Supplements. A Systematic Review.

Breast milk is the optimal food choice for infant growth and development. Among breast milk components, fructooligosaccharides (FOSs) are being actively studied because of their role in microbiota development. In particular, 2'-fucosyllactose is being proposed as a potential supplement/nutraceutical or component of infant formula.

Nitrate Respiration in NAR1: from Horizontal Gene Transfer to Internal Evolution.

Genes coding for enzymes of the denitrification pathway appear randomly distributed among isolates of the ancestral genus , but only in few strains of the species has the pathway been studied to a certain detail. Here, we review the enzymes involved in this pathway present in NAR1, a strain extensively employed as a model for nitrate respiration, in the light of its full sequence recently assembled through a combination of PacBio and Illumina technologies in order to counteract the systematic errors introduced by the former technique. The genome of this strain is divided in four replicons, a chromosome of 2,021,843 bp, two megaplasmids of 370,865 and 77,135 bp and a small plasmid of 9799 pb.