Abstract
The mammalian gut microflora is a highly complex community of microorganisms that exhibits a large degree of species diversity. This diversity, coupled with the cumbersome procedures necessary to identify the predominant (anaerobic) components of the flora (Holdeman and Moore, 1975), makes the analysis and characterization of the flora by conventional microbiological methods extremely difficult and time consuming. Thus, studies of dietary modification of the flora need to be based on simpler, quicker methods. Measurement of microbial enzyme activities in suspensions of gut luminal contents or feces provides such a method and has been used to assess the influence of diet (Goldin and Gorbach, 1976; Rowland et al., 1985), exogenous microorganisms (Goldin et al, 1980), and disease (Mastromarino et al., 1976) on the gut microflora. By choosing enzymes that are known to participate in the detoxification of foreign compounds or in their activation to toxic, mutagenic, or carcinogenic metabolites, it is possible to gain insight into the likely consequences for the health of the host animal of the changes induced.
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© 1990 Plenum Press, New York
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Rowland, I.R., Mallett, A.K. (1990). The Influence of Dietary Fiber on Microbial Enzyme Activity in the Gut. In: Kritchevsky, D., Bonfield, C., Anderson, J.W. (eds) Dietary Fiber. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0519-4_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0519-4_14
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