Study of antagonism between some intestinal bacteria with high-speed micellar electrokinetic chromatography

In this work, high-speed micellar electrokinetic chromatography with LIF detection was applied to study the antagonism between three intestinal bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli), Bacillus licheniformis (B. licheniformis) and Bacillus subtilis (B. subtilis). The fluorescent derivatization for the bacteria was performed by labeling the bacteria with FITC. In a high-speed capillary electrophoresis (HSCE) device, the three bacteria could be completely separated within 4 min under the separation mode MEKC. The BGE was 1 × TBE containing 30 mM SDS and 1.5 × 10^-5  g/mL polyethylene oxide. The limits of detection for E. coli, B. licheniformis and B. subtilis were 2.80 × 10⁶ CFU/mL, 1.60 × 10⁶ CFU/mL and 1.90 × 10⁶ CFU/mL respectively. Lastly, the method was applied to investigate the antagonism between the three bacteria. The bacteria were mixed and cultured for 7 days. The samples were separated and determined every day to study the interaction between bacteria. The results showed that B. licheniformis and B. subtilis could not inhibit each other, but they could effectively inhibit the reproduction of E. coli. The method developed in this work was quick, sensitive and convenient, and it had great potential in the application of antagonism study for bacteria.