Comparing impact of sterilization treatments of pulse flours on in vitro simulated colon fermentation

In vitro simulated colon fermentation is increasingly used to screen for interactions between foods and drugs with the gut microbiota. For some food products that need to avoid thermal processing due to heat lability, sterilization of the product to avoid confounding effects of contaminating microbes on the isolated gut community can be challenging. Here we test different chemical sterilants for their ability to adequately reduce microbial loads without having significant effects on the the food products (in this case pulse flours) and their downstream fermentation by the gut microbiota.