Bacteria to the Future

Probiotics are bacteria which confer benefit to their environment. Already widely employed in food products such as yogurts, probiotics have many other applications including mineral extraction, environmental processes and aquaculture.

Dr. Ben Forward, Senior Scientist with RPC's life science group, has been leading a project to develop probiotics and other novel bacterially derived products for use in aquaculture. This research, funded by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) Atlantic Innovation Fund (AIF) allowed RPC to establish significant expertise in the areas of probiotic discovery, testing and application, and in the related areas of bio-prospecting. Dr. Forward has established a collection of over 1500 bacteria derived from a variety of New Brunswick’s unique coastal marine environments. Many of the bacteria in the library appear to be new species as well as those which have not been previously cultured. These bacteria are being screened for probiotics and antimicrobials for use in aquaculture. With such a relatively large number of bacteria, the development of high throughput screening methodology was a necessary and a significant innovation in the project. High throughput methodology developed at RPC transformed the process from 50 assays per day to 2000 assays per day with reasonable demands on time and materials. Eliminating the constraint of a limited set of assay conditions, the entire library can now be screened using a variety of conditions which greatly increases the probability of discovering candidate strains for further study.

A promising application is for improved fish larval survival rates. In Atlantic Canada and elsewhere, rearing of alternative species such as cod and haddock has often been plagued by very low (3-5%) survival rates at the larval stages. The use of probiotics developed within this project has resulted in significant improvements in larval survival. This improvement is achieved through the ability of the probiotics to encourage the development of a healthy bacterial community with the larvae and exclude the establishment of harmful pathogens. This green solution to a common hurdle in the rearing of alternative species is expected to boost the productivity of the aquaculture industry in Atlantic Canada and provide a viable alternative to the use of antibiotics.

Bacteria are an important component of green solutions that reduce the use of medications and chemicals. RPC’s probiotics expertise is certain to make an important contribution to future developments.

 

 

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