Characterization of human faecal flora by means of an improved fluoro-morphometrical method

The use of polyclonal antibodies in differentiating between samples of faecal microflora derived from ten healthy volunteers was assessed. The distribution of FITC-labelled antibodies (of the IgA, IgG and IgM isotype) over 144 morphologically distinct subsets of faecal bacteria ('morphotypes') was quantified by means of digital morphometry and quantitative immunofluorescence. Furthermore, a new dataprocessing algorithm was developed which makes objective quantitation of the antibody distributions over the faecal morphotypes possible. The results of this study imply that the antibody binding capacity of faecal morphotypes is a unique characteristic of faecal microflora.