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Projects
You can find basic information on our projects and research activities here.
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News
If yout want to know what is new in our lab, click this way.
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Where you can see and meet us
Here you fill find a list of conferences and seminars where we presented or will present our results in a near future. We will be happy to meet you there.
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Laboratory strain collection
If you are interested in bacterial strain from intestinal tract, mostly anaerobes from chickens and pigs, if you are interested in their basic metabolism or if you ant to perform BLAST against genomes of our bacteria, you are at the right place here.
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Microbe gallery
Bacteria can be amazing. Do not you believe? Try our gallery.
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Miscellaneous
If you still have not found what you were looking for, try to click here. You will see time-lapse videos how bacteria or phages grow. Or if you are uncertain on origin of particular bacterium, try to go this way as well.
Salmonella group at the VRI Brno is interested in structure and function of farm animal microbiota. Basic information on gut microbiota for broadest non-professional public can be found here. If you are professional in poultry production, the most important facts on chicken gut microbiota can be found here. And you work in research or academy, next level of information on chicken gut microbiota for your consideration can be found here.
Chickens and their microbiota represent the main target of our interest followed by pigs and their microbiota. For correct understanding of structure and function of gut microbiota we perform also comparative studied using samples from other animal species including humans. This is why we analysed and compared gut microbiota of chickens, pigs, humans, cattle, horses, mice, dogs and even penguins from Antarctica. Identification of taxa present in a broad range of different hosts or host-adapted species helps in understanding spread and function of individual gut microbiota members. Excel file with data used for the figures below can be viewed here. Playing with this file will enable you to understand which genera are specific for particular host, or which genera dominate in one host but represent minority in another. Have a look and understand it yourselves, in your way of thinking. In additional two sheets you can see how different genera and the most abundant species are distributed in chickens and their environment in commercial production. If you want to understand how bacteria circulate between its host and environment, we indeed recommend to view since some of the outputs are surprising, counterintuitive, such as abundance of Lactobacilli in faecal microbiota of humans and dogs or which animals are common host of Campylobacter. At our web page, you can also download a list of strains which we obtain mostly from digestive tract of farm animals or their environment in pure cultures and which are available for joint projects. You can also visit and enjoy our microbe gallery. And since most of the obtained isolates we have characterised byt whole genome sequencing, you can BLAST our genomes with your gene or sequences of interest.
Welcome at our web pages and we believe that you will find useful information here. Who prefers videos, you can start here.
For additional information, joint research proposals, contractual research etc, contact us at ivan.rychlik@vri.cz.
QuoCNA probiotics for newly hatched chicks in use
On November 26, 2025 additional 180 000 chicks have been treated with QuoCNA probiotics. These chicks will be resistant to Salmonella or E. coli and will enable antibiotic free production. Probiotics were administered using own prototype QuocnaDrop 🙂 More than 6 000 000 chicks have been treated with QuoCNA probiotics in 2025 in the Czech […]
Publication on new type of probiotics for newborn piglets
A new publication on new type of probiotics for newborn piglets has been published. This study is based on observations that gut microbiota of nursed piglets is dominated by bacterial species from genus Bacteroides. This is why we prepared a mixtures of 4 different species belonging to this genus and used it for oral administration […]
Influence of monoacylglycerides on chicken resistance to Salmonella
A new paper has been just published. Feed supplementation with a mixture of C1 to C12 monoacylglycerides resulted in lower Salmonella counts at the end of broiler production cycle. Such finding is important for decreased Salmonella transfer from poultry production to human food chain. More information can be found in the original paper published in […]
Active modification of gut microbiota increase chicken resistance to Salmonella
We tested new types of probiotics for chickens in 14 independent experiments. Using hundreds of chickens, efficacy of 22 different mixtures was tested and compared. Unifying feature of the tested mixtures was that all contained different representatives of genus Bacteroides and family Veillonellaceae. Although initial aim of this study was to identify a mixture of […]
New paper – microbiota vers chicken immunoglobulins
Our new paper is focused of the interactions between immunoglobulin secretion to lumen of the caecum and composition of bacterial microbiota in chickens. To understand the role of chicken immunoglobulins, we used cell sorting of bacteria with and without bound IgA followed by their identification as well as caecal contents originating from wilde type and […]
Gut microbiota of autistic and healthy children
Though human gut microbiota does not represent the main research area of our group, we can deal with such topic in a collaboration. A new paper on gut microbiota of autistic and healthy children is just one example. There were significant differences in gut microbiota of these two groups of children although it is difficult […]
New paper on metabolism of selected anaerobes in the chicken caecum
A new paper on the metabolism of 20 anaerobic bacteria in the caecum of chickens has been published in June 2024. Different species of genus Bacteroides degraded (poly)saccharides. Bacteroides mediterraneensis also expressed type VI secrection system which is used by bacteria for inactivation of competing bacterial species in mixed microbial populations. E. coli or Succinatimonas laso […]
New probiotic product QuoCNA
On April 2, 2024, we received decision from the Institute for State Control of Veterinary Biologicals and Medicines which permits free distribution of new probiotic product QuoCNA in the Czech Republic. Product QuoCNA is based on results of own research in the area of gut microbiota of chickens lasting for more than 10 years. Product […]
How to identify bacterial horizontally transmissible genes including those responsible for antibiotic resistance
Identification of horizontally transmissible genes including those responsible for antibiotic resistance is apparently a single task. However, immediately after it turns out that this task is not that simple. In our new paper in the Microbiology Spectrum focused on this issue and proposed a functional pipeline. Our conclusions can be founded in this pdf file.
New paper on importance of contact between adult hen and newly hatched chicks for the development of skin and respiratory tract microbiota
A new paper from our production has been accepted for publication in the Poultry Science. This paper introduces microbial composition of skin and tracheal microbiota and further develops importance of contact between a hen and newly hatched chicks for the development of skin and respiratory tract microbiota of chickens. Many bacteria of gut origin were […]