Abstract
This study aimed at investigating the potential of a novel functional herbal tea to act as the carrier for the probiotic Bacillus coagulans GanedenBC30. Spores markedly survived to infusion treatments and the simulation of the gastrointestinal transit only slightly affected the survival, which was 94.8 ±2.8%. An in-depth investigation using the Simulator of the Human Intestinal Microbial Ecosystem (SHIME) which incorporated mucin-covered microcosms was performed. Q-PCR with targeted primers demonstrated that the probiotic quickly colonized mucosal compartments and still persisted after 4 days of wash out. As estimated by plate count combined with 16S rRNA sequencing, B. coagulans GanedenBC30 showed almost the same behavior in luminal compartments both during herbal tea intake and wash out. By summing the luminal and mucosal values and referring to whole volume of colon bioreactors, the content of viable cells of B. coagulans GanedenBC30 was largely above the probiotic threshold.