Raffinose has become a major focus of research interest and recent studies have shown that besides beneficial bifidobacteria and lactobacilli, Escherichia coli, Enterococcus faecium and Streptococcus pneumoniae can also utilize
raffinose and
raffinose might lead to
flatulence in some hosts. Therefore, it is required to find out the
raffinose-metabolizing bacteria in the gut and the bacteria responsible for the
flatulence. The BLASTP search results showed that the homologous
proteins of
glycosidases related to
raffinose utilization are widely distributed in 196 of the 528 gut bacterial strains. Fifty-nine bacterial strains belonging to nine species of five genera were isolated from human feces and were found to be capable of utilizing
raffinose; of these species, Enterococcus avium and Streptococcus salivarius were reported for the first time. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis of the supernatants of the nine species revealed that the bacteria could utilize
raffinose in different manners.
Glucose and
melibiose were detected in the supernatants of Enterococcus avium E5 and Streptococcus salivarius B5, respectively. However, no resulting saccharides of
raffinose degradation were detected in the supernatants of other seven strains, indicating that they had different
raffinose utilization types from Enterococcus avium E5 and Streptococcus salivarius B5. Gas was produced with
raffinose utilization by Escherichia coli, Enterococcus faecium, Streptococcus macedonicus, Streptococcus pasteurianus and Enterococcus avium. Thus, more attention should be paid to the
raffinose-utilizing bacteria besides bifidobacteria and further studies are required to reveal the mechanisms of
raffinose utilization to clarify the relationship between
raffinose and gut bacteria.