The materials used

in a screening method were as follows: FOS from chicory, raffinose, stachyose, pectin from apple, wheat-bran, carrageenan (Sigma-Aldrich Japan Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan), chlorella (Chlorella Industry Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan), starch from wheat, glucan, agar (Wako Pure Chemical Industries, Ltd., Osaka, Japan), onion, kelp, Japanese mustard spinach, arrowroot, starch from arrowroot (purchased from a market), JBO, and JBOVS. The variety of JBO used in this study was Fuyuougi 2. The JBOs themselves selleck chemical were obtained from the Kanagawa Agricultural Technology Center (Kanagawa, Japan). The JBOs were planted in soil taken from the farm at the Center for about 3 months at the mature stage, and the resulting JBOVS were collected from the JBO cavity when the JBO was harvested. Male 10-week-old BALB/cA mice (CLEA Japan, ATM Kinase Inhibitor mw Inc., Tokyo, Japan) were housed at 23–25 °C

and 50–60% relative humidity with a 12 h light-dark cycle. The mice were fed CLEA Rodent Diet CA-1 (CLEA Japan, Inc., Tokyo, Japan). Fresh fecal sources were collected from the mice. The collected fecal sources (1%) were suspended anaerobically in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) (8 g NaCl, 0.2 g KCl, 2.9 g Na2HPO4·12H2O, and 0.2 g KH2PO4 per litre distilled water, pH 7.0) with 0.5% (w/v) of each substrate. The PBS solutions containing 5 mg/L resazurin and 1 mg/L cysteine hydrochloride were used to provide an indication of the amount of oxygen in the medium and act as an oxygen scavenger, respectively. These solutions were pretreated with pure CO2 (>99.9%) gas and autoclaved before being mixed with the fecal sources. The substrates examined were from the above-mentioned list of materials, as well as a control (no addition of substrate). All substrates were freeze-dried and crushed to a powder by using an Automill

machine (Tokken, Inc., Chiba, Japan). The PBS solutions including fecal source and the substrate were purged with N2 gas to allow for any residual oxygen to be displaced from the headspace. The suspensions were incubated at 37 °C under anaerobic conditions in an incubator without shaking. Resazurin remains colourless under anaerobic conditions and turns red in the presence of oxygen, 3-mercaptopyruvate sulfurtransferase and great care was taken to ensure that the experiments were conducted under anaerobic conditions to prevent the solution turning red. The suspensions were collected after 12 h incubation and then centrifuged. The supernatants of the centrifuged samples were used as samples for NMR measurements. The experiments (i.e., in vitro incubation) were performed 3–5 times for each substrate and the control. All animal experiments were approved by the Animal Research Committees of RIKEN Yokohama Research Institute and Yokohama City University. Animals were kept in environmentally controlled animal facilities at the Yokohama City University.