Congratulations dr. van den Broek!

On Friday, February 16th 2018, Marianne van den Broek finalised her PhD about the ‘In vitro and in vivo probiotic potential of Lactobacillus spp. for otitis media’ with a public defence. In this thesis the following questions regarding the probiotic potential of lactobacilli were addressed: Can lactobacilli inhibit the three main otitis media pathogens: Moraxella …

Multifactorial inhibition of lactobacilli against the respiratory tract pathogen Moraxella catarrhalis

Probiotics, mainly lactic acid bacteria (LAB), are widely focused on gastrointestinal applications. However, recent microbiome studies indicate that LAB can be endogenous members of other human body sites such as the upper respiratory tract (URT). Interestingly, DNA-based microbiome research suggests an inverse correlation between the presence of LAB and the occurrence of important URT pathogens …

Large-scale genome analysis of Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus paracasei and Lactobacillus rhamnosus reveals taxonomic inconsistencies

The closely related species of the Lactobacillus casei group (L. casei, L. paracasei and L. rhamnosus) are extensively studied because of their applications in food fermentations and as probiotics. Our results, now published in mSystems, show that many strains in this group are incorrectly classified. Surprisingly many bacteria classified as L. casei are misclassified and …