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Bacteria belonging to genus Bifidobacterium are known to have probiotic properties and are incorporated in a variety of probiotic products. There are continuous efforts being made to obtain new probiotic bifid strains. For this, isolation of bifidobacteria is being attempted from various sources and several media are being used for this purpose, which are discussed in this book. To be used as probiotics, bacteria should be well characterized from the safety point of view. Various classical and molecular techniques available for characterization and identification of bifidobacteria are also discussed. Besides this book also throws light on an interesting much less studied aspect of targeting the genes of probiotic traits in the molecular characterization and identification of potentially probiotic strains in single step rather than first isolating and characterizing the strains and then screening for probiotic properties. This has been illustrated with the help of bile salt hydrolase gene targeted in PCR. This book should be of help to the students and researchers working in the field of molecular characterization of bifidobacteria and other probiotics.

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Pawas Goswami, Ph.D. in Dairy Microbiology´ from National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana, India. Post Graduate in Microbiology (Honours) from Panjab University, Chandigarh. Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati University, Ajmer, India.

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