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Beneficial and probiotic bacteria play essential roles in their hosts, providing various health benefits, including immunity to infectious diseases. The Lactobacillaceae family consists of Gram-positive bacteria with confirmed probiotic properties. This study utilizes Lactobacillaceae species as a model to demonstrate the effectiveness of single-cell high throughput analysis in studying cellular aggregation. The focus is on analyzing the response of these beneficial species to simple carbohydrates from the diet. The study showcases how Imaging Flow Cytometry (IFC) can overcome the fundamental differences in the assembly of probiotic bacteria in the presence and absence of carbohydrates. IFC combines the power and speed of conventional flow cytometry with the spatial resolution of microscopy, enabling high-rate complex morphometric measurements in a phenotypically defined manner across a library of beneficial bacterial strains and conditions. This protocol provides insights into the autoaggregation of Lactobacillaceae species and sheds light on their response to dietary carbohydrates, contributing to understanding the mechanisms behind the beneficial effects of these probiotic bacteria.

Mycobacterium smegmatis is a commonly used mycobacterial model system. Here, we show that M. smegmatis protects itself against elevated salinity by synthesizing ectoine and hydroxyectoine and characterize the phenotype of a nonproducing mutant. This is the first analysis of M. smegmatis halotolerance and of the molecular mechanism that supports it.