Isolation of Commensal Escherichia coli Strains from Feces of Healthy Laboratory Mice or Rats

Tingting Ju; Benjamin P Willing

doi:10.21769/BioProtoc.2780

Isolation of Commensal Escherichia coli Strains from Feces of Healthy Laboratory Mice or Rats

Bio Protoc. 2018 Mar 20;8(6):e2780. doi: 10.21769/BioProtoc.2780.

Authors

Tingting Ju¹, Benjamin P Willing¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

Abstract

The colonization abundance of commensal E. coli in the gastrointestinal tract of healthy laboratory mice and rats ranges from 10⁴ to 10⁶ CFU/g feces. Although very well characterized, the family that E. coli belongs to has a very homogeneous 16S rRNA gene sequence, making the identification from 16S rRNA sequencing difficult. This protocol provides a procedure of isolating and identifying commensal E. coli strains from a healthy laboratory mouse or rat feces. The method can be applied to isolate commensal E. coli from other laboratory rodent strains.

Keywords: Commensal; Escherichia coli; Isolation; Laboratory rodents.