Green tea polysaccharide conjugates and gelatin enhanced viability of L. acidophilus by layer-by-layer encapsulation

Adverse environments such as the gastrointestinal tract can affect the efficacy of probiotics. Therefore, the adequate protection of probiotics and their total effect exertion are probiotics application research hotspots. Green tea polysaccharide conjugate (gTPC), an anionic polymer, and gelatin as the encapsulation materials, and layer-by-layer self-assembly technology as the method, were applied to encapsulate Lactobacillus acidophilus. Microscopic results showed that with the increase in the number of deposited layers, the encapsulation was more complete. After continuous exposure to simulated gastrointestinal fluid for 120 min, the survival rate of unen-capsulated cells was 53.26%, and encapsulated cells with different deposited layers were 66.00%, 71.99%, 76.94%, and 79.89%, respectively. In addition, Gel/gTPC bilayers can efficiently improve cell thermotolerance and freezing resistance. Results indicated that the more the number of Gel/gTPC bilayers, the more significant the protection is. Therefore, gTPC and Gel are viable materials to protect probiotics through microencapsulation by Layer-by-layer self-assembly.