Advances of intra‐species molecular typing analysis of aquatic probiotics approved by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture

Abstract

Probiotics confer a health benefit on the host and could be used as a good alternative to antibiotics. Probiotics are strain-specific when exerting their function, so it is necessary to identify them to strain level. In recent years, intra-species molecular typing and identification methods have developed rapidly, which commonly are used for typing the main pathogenic bacteria and rare for studies on probiotic typing, whilst it is imperative. This article describes molecular typing methods including AFLP, RAPD, PFGE, ribotyping, MLST, rep-PCR and whole-genome sequencing to identity some aquatic probiotics approved by the Ministry of Agriculture of China, which are Bifidobacterium, Enterococcus, Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, Aspergillus, Bacillus, Rhodopseudomonas palustris and Streptococcus thermophilus. In addition, the principles, applications, advantages and disadvantages of these typing methods are also discussed.