Molecular interaction of bifidobacteria with kefir grains

We got insights into the B. bifidum PRL2010 genes whose expression resulted to be affected when bacterial cells were cultivated on kefir and kefiran as the unique carbon source. In order to exploit the transcriptome of PRL2010 grown on kefir and hefiran we performed global transcription profiling using PRL2010 microarrays hybridized with cDNA from the RNA samples of B. bifidum PRL2010 cultivated on these substrates. We isolated mRNA from B. bifidum PRL2010 cells collected from a culture of kefir grains and from PRL2010 cultivated on MRS plus kefiran at upon 12 hours following inoculation. Microarray analysis was performed with an oligonucleotide array based on the B. bifidum PRL2010 genome: a total of 8,130 oligonucleotide probes of 60bp in length were designed on 1707 ORFs using eArray5.0 (Agilent Technologies). 5 Oligos were designed for each gene on a 4x44k Agilent Microarrays(Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, USA). Replicates were distributed on the chip at random, non-adjacent positions.