Sunday, September 1, 2013

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An investigation on the effects of various beverages on probiotics. (Lactobacillus)

Nguyen Minh Tri, Htet Wai Yan Linn, Ian Joseph Acu Kang, Ethan Ng Yi
School of Science and Technology, Singapore. 
 
 
Abstract
An investigation on the effects of various beverages on probiotics (Lactobacillus). In life, it is normal that people get sick, thus there may be times when antibiotics will be required to help one get better. These antibiotics change the bacteria composition in their guts, unintentionally kill off the essential bacterias like those required for better digestion. Afterwards, taking probiotic drinks might then help restore some of the helpful bacterias killed by the antibiotics. It goes without saying that whenever we drink probiotics to restore balance, we would drink other beverages during the day as well, such as coffee, tea, and water. The purpose of the research is to find out the effects on these probiotics when such beverages are consumed.

To do this, we are going to grow lactobacillus colonies and put them with the various beverages and test the bacteria growth.

We eventually found out that lactobacillus did not grow well when mixed with Cola (0 colonies in 10^0 dilution) and Energy Drink (9 colonies in 10^0 dilution). However, when lactobacillus was put with Milk, it had the most colonies growing on the MRS agar plates, with an average of 3781 lactobacillus colonies growing on plates of 10^-3 dilution, followed by coffee, with an average 3185 colonies in plates of 10^-3 dilution.

From this test, we can warn people to not drink energy drinks or cola with probiotic drinks to prevent negating the effects of the probiotic drinks.

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