- 15 BillionCFU15 Billion CFUper serving*
- 15Live strains
- 2 fl oz
*at the time of manufacture
- Gluten & dairy free
- Non-GMO
- No sugar added
Fifteen strains of live cultures, growing in cold-pressed organic juice and bottled still alive. A red base of watermelon, pomegranate, beet and cranberry.
Ingredients
Our Red Juice Base: organic watermelon juice, organic apple juice, organic pomegranate juice, organic beet juice, organic strawberry juice, organic cranberry powder.
Fifteen live cultures: Limosilactobacillus reuteri 1E1, Bifidobacterium infantis Bi-26, Lactobacillus bulgaricus Lb-87, Bifidobacterium bifidum Bb-06, Bifidobacterium longum Bl-05, Lactobacillus acidophilus La-14, Lactobacillus brevis Lbr-35, Lactobacillus gasseri Lg-36, Bifidobacterium breve Bb-18, Lacticaseibacillus casei Lc-11, Ligilactobacillus salivarius Ls-33, Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis Bi-07, Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus Lr-32, Lacticaseibacillus paracasei Lpc-37, Lactiplantibacillus plantarum Lp-115.
Contains 95% juice. 30 calories a bottle, 4g of sugar, none of it added. No gluten, dairy, corn, preservatives or added sugar. Keep refrigerated.
How to drink it
Like any food, there’s no dose and no schedule. You drink it when you want it. Cold, straight out of the fridge, is when it tastes best.
Store refrigerated. Ships cold to your door.
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Try our Living Probiotic shot for yourself and taste the difference.
Delicious Microbiome Support
Prebiotics, probiotics and postbiotics in a cold-pressed organic red juice shot.
Tart and Sweet
A tart and sweet juice shot, with no aftertaste.
Doctor Formulated
Fifteen named strains, chosen on purpose, expertly formulated by doctors and scientists.
2 Years in the Making
The cultures were already proven. Two years went into a 95% juice base that keeps all fifteen of them alive.
Organic cold-pressedjuice shot infusedwithLive Cultures
Small batch, shipped cold directly to you.
- No gluten, dairy, corn, preservatives or added sugar
- Delicious and easy-to-drink. A little sweet, a hint of sour and no aftertaste
- A true synbiotic - probiotic cultures together with prebiotics creating postbiotics.
A true synbiotic
A new standard in food and probiotics comes to life with Doctor’s Biome
Put a probiotic and a prebiotic in one product and you have a synbiotic.
A prebiotic is a substrate that your own digestion can’t break down, but certain bacteria can.
That’s the whole definition, and the second half is the part that matters. A prebiotic isn’t simply fiber. It’s something a specific organism has the enzymes to use. Not every fiber qualifies and not every strain can use the ones that do.
Formally the accepted list is short. Inulin-type fibers are the most common entry on it.
A probiotic is a living microorganism. That’s it, and it’s the source of most of the confusion in this category.
Living is a technical condition, not a marketing word. A culture that isn’t alive in adequate numbers isn’t a probiotic, whatever the front of the box says.
Most probiotics are processed into an inactive state and have to come back to life before they can do anything.
A postbiotic is what a probiotic makes when it eats a prebiotic.
Lactic acid. Short-chain fatty acids. Proteins, peptides, and other compounds released during the process. The technical term is metabolites, which is a dull word for the residue of something living having a meal.
The prebiotic is fuel. The probiotic is the machine. The postbiotic is the thing the machine was built to produce.
What's inside
Fifteen strains. Nothing to hide.
Every batch is tested by an independent, accredited microbiology laboratory for safety and the absence of pathogens.
- 15B CFU per shot
- 15 Live strains
- 95% Juice content
- 2 oz Daily serving
- 0g Added sugar
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Where it was discovered
Berlin, in the 1960s. Gerhard Reuter picked it out of human intestinal samples and realised it was not the species everyone had been filing it under. It was formally named in 1980, and moved into the genus Limosilactobacillus in 2020.Who discovered it
Gerhard Reuter, a bacteriologist at the Free University of Berlin. The species is named after him. It was formally described by Otto Kandler, Karl Stetter and R. Köhl in 1980, and renamed by Jinshui Zheng and fourteen colleagues in 2020. Reuter also described Bifidobacterium infantis, further down this list, in 1963.Where it is typically found
The gut, and specifically the guts of vertebrates rather than food. It is one of the few lactobacilli that genuinely lives in its host rather than passing through, and humans, pigs, chickens, sheep and rodents each carry their own genetically distinct lineages of it. Also human breast milk, sourdough, some fermented dairy and fermented sausage.The science
A Gram-positive rod that forms no spores. It is obligately heterofermentative, meaning it produces carbon dioxide as well as lactic acid, which is a real consideration in a sealed bottle. It converts glycerol into a compound called reuterin, and it builds several long-chain sugars including reuteran and levan.
The type strain’s genome is 1,999,618 base pairs, 38.9% GC, about 1,900 protein-coding genes.
Studies
On this strain: none located. No published genome, no culture-collection deposit, no recorded isolation source.
On the species: the type strain’s genome has been fully sequenced and annotated (Smythe & Efthimiou, Microorganisms, 2022). In a food-matrix study, a L. reuteri strain held viability better in refrigerated orange juice than in bottled water across eight weeks at 4°C, though the same juice matrix reduced its tolerance to simulated intestinal fluid (Moussavi et al., Foods, 2023).
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
Described in 1963 by Gerhard Reuter in Berlin, as a species of its own. In 2008 it was shown to sit inside Bifidobacterium longum and was reduced to a subspecies of it, so the current name is Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis. The label still prints the 1963 name. That is out of date rather than wrong; it was the valid name for forty-five years and it is still what the trade calls it.Who discovered it
Gerhard Reuter, at the Free University of Berlin, and the same bacteriologist the Limosilactobacillus reuteri at the top of this list is named after. The genus itself was erected by the Danish microbiologist Sigurd Orla-Jensen in 1924. Organisms of this kind were first described from the human gut by Henry Tissier at the Institut Pasteur around 1899. The 2008 reclassification was the work of Paola Mattarelli, Chiara Bonaparte, Bruno Pot and Bruno Biavati, in Bologna and Ghent.Where it is typically found
The human gut, where it is common early in life and a minor member of the adult community. The subspecies name means “of an infant” and records that. Beyond people it turns up in fermented dairy and in supplemented foods, always as a culture somebody added rather than as a resident.The science
Gram-positive, and shaped unlike the lactobacilli on this list, irregular rods that often fork into Y and V forms. That cleft is what the genus is named for.
It is an anaerobe, and the most oxygen-sensitive organism in this blend. It ferments sugar by a route found in essentially no other gut bacterium, the bifid shunt, whose signature enzyme splits fructose-6-phosphate and yields acetate as well as lactate. The enzyme is so particular to these organisms that testing for it is how the genus is identified.
This strain’s genome is 2,569,657 base pairs, 59.4% GC, about 2,280 protein-coding genes, smaller than the species type strain’s.
Studies
On this strain: a culture-collection deposit (ATCC SD-6720), a published genome, and two laboratory papers on how it handles particular sugars, all co-authored by its supplier (Zabel et al., Sci Rep, 2019 and 2020). One human trial has been run. It was stopped early, well short of the size it was designed for, and did not meet the outcome it set out to measure.
On the species: a large literature, most of it belonging to other strains. We have deliberately not listed it.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
Isolated in 1905 in Geneva, from Bulgarian soured milk, and named for the country it came from. It was formally described as Thermobacterium bulgaricum in 1919, moved into Lactobacillus in 1971, and reduced to a subspecies in 1983, so the full current name is Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus. When the old Lactobacillus genus was split into twenty-five in 2020 this one kept its name, because it belongs to the species the whole genus is defined by.Who discovered it
Stamen Grigorov, a Bulgarian physician in his twenties working in Léon Massol’s laboratory in Geneva. Sigurd Orla-Jensen in Copenhagen gave it its first formal name in 1919. Morrison Rogosa and P. A. Hansen moved it into Lactobacillus in 1971, and Norbert Weiss, Ulrich Schillinger and Otto Kandler in Munich made it a subspecies in 1983, Kandler also co-described the Limosilactobacillus reuteri at the top of this list.Where it is typically found
Yoghurt, which by both European and Codex definition is milk fermented by this organism together with Streptococcus thermophilus. The two feed each other and neither makes yoghurt alone. Also Bulgarian kiselo mlyako, Turkish ayran, and the thermophilic starters behind Parmigiano-Reggiano, Grana Padano, mozzarella, Emmental and Gruyère. In 2007 it was found on wild plants in Bulgaria for the first time, by steeping branches in warm milk the way the starter has always traditionally been made, which may be where it came from originally. It is not a resident of the human gut. It passes through.The science
A Gram-positive rod, long and often in chains, forming no spores. It is obligately homofermentative: it turns lactose almost entirely into lactic acid and gives off no gas, which is a useful property in a sealed bottle and the opposite of the reuteri at the top of this list.
It is thermophilic, happiest around 40 to 45°C. Its genome is in active retreat; it has been fed milk for so long that it has lost the ability to make several amino acids for itself and now depends on breaking down casein to get them. The enzyme that does the breaking down, PrtB, is also what builds the flavour and texture of yoghurt.
Studies
On this strain: no independent published study. Everything known about it comes from its supplier’s own technical monograph, which reports a closed genome of 1,858,701 base pairs and rates its survival in acid as fair. There is no public culture-collection deposit.
On the species: the type strain’s genome was sequenced in 2006 and showed exactly that long retreat into the milk niche (van de Guchte et al., PNAS, 2006). The 2007 plant isolation is Michaylova et al., FEMS Microbiol Lett.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
Described from the human gut in 1900 by Henry Tissier at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, under the name Bacillus bifidus. Sigurd Orla-Jensen moved it into a new genus, Bifidobacterium, in 1924. It is the type species of that genus, which means every other bifidobacterium (including the three others on this list) is defined by reference to this one.Who discovered it
Henry Tissier, a French paediatrician and bacteriologist at the Institut Pasteur, who published the description in his 1900 Paris thesis. His work on the flora of the human intestine is one of the founding documents of the entire field. The genus is Orla-Jensen’s, from Copenhagen, in 1924.Where it is typically found
The human large intestine, where it is a resident rather than a visitor; it is detectable in roughly three-quarters of healthy adults. It also appears in fermented dairy and in supplemented foods, but unlike the lactobacilli on this list it is not a traditional food-fermentation organism, so anything of it in sauerkraut, sourdough or ripening cheese got there because somebody put it there.The science
Gram-positive, and named for its shape: bifidus is Latin for cleft or split, after cells that fork into Y and V forms.
Like the other bifidobacteria here it runs the bifid shunt rather than ordinary glycolysis, yielding acetate as well as lactate. What separates this species from its relatives is what it can eat. About sixty percent of its sugar-cutting enzymes act on mucin, the glycoprotein the gut lining secretes, so it is able to live on what the host puts out rather than only on what the host swallows.
It is an anaerobe, and the literature describes it as unusually sensitive to both oxygen and acid.
Studies
On this strain: none located. It has a deposit number (ATCC SD 6576) and an entry in the FDA’s substance register, and no published genome and no human trial. When its own supplier ran a seven-strain human trial in 2008, this was not one of the seven (Paineau et al., 2008).
On the species: the genome and the mucin biochemistry are well described (Turroni et al., Front Microbiol, 2014). The human work belongs to other strains, which we have deliberately not listed.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
Described in 1963 by Gerhard Reuter, from the human gut. In 2008 the three varieties of it that had long been recognised were formalised as subspecies, and there are five of them now, which means the name as printed, with no subspecies after it, covers more ground than it appears to.Who discovered it
Gerhard Reuter again, at the Free University of Berlin. He is the third organism on this list to trace back to him, having described this one and the Bifidobacterium infantis above it in the same body of work, and given his name to the Limosilactobacillus reuteri at the top. The 2008 subspecies proposal was Paola Mattarelli, Chiara Bonaparte, Bruno Pot and Bruno Biavati, in Bologna and Lille.Where it is typically found
The human large intestine, across a whole lifetime. Most bifidobacteria peak early in life and then fall away; this is typically the one still detectable in adults and in the elderly, which makes it the most straightforwardly adult organism of the five bifidobacteria here. It is also reported from the vagina, and used as an added culture in fermented dairy.The science
Gram-positive, anaerobic, non-motile, forming no spores, and named for its shape, longum, long, after the elongated rods.
It runs the same bifid shunt as the other bifidobacteria on this list, through an enzyme found in essentially no other gut organism. Where the Bifidobacterium bifidum here specialises in the sugars the host secretes, this one’s genome is weighted towards the sugars the host eats, carrying an unusually large investment in oligosaccharide transport for the size of it.
The reference genome for the species is 2.26 million base pairs at about 60% GC.
Studies
On this strain: none located. It has a deposit number (ATCC SD5588) and a register entry, and no published genome, no human trial, and no published subspecies assignment, so the part of the species literature that would actually apply to it cannot yet be identified.
On the species: large, and belonging to other strains. The genome paper that established this organism’s adaptation to the human gut used NCC2705 (Schell et al., PNAS, 2002).
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
Described in 1900 by Ernst Moro, as Bacillus acidophilus. The name Lactobacillus acidophilus then sat in continuous popular use for seventy years without ever having been formally published, P. A. Hansen and G. Mocquot finally established it properly in 1970. It is one of the species that kept the name Lactobacillus when the genus was split into twenty-five in 2020.Who discovered it
Ernst Moro, a paediatrician born in what is now Ljubljana, who had qualified in medicine the year before and went on to work with Theodor Escherich in Vienna and then to lead paediatrics at Heidelberg. Outside microbiology he is remembered for the Moro reflex. The 1970 paper that made the name official was P. A. Hansen and G. Mocquot.Where it is typically found
The human small intestine, principally, and the mouth. It is also a named dairy culture with a century of industrial use behind it (acidophilus milk, AB and ABT yoghurts, some cheeses) which gives it a longer documented run in food than most organisms on this list.The science
A Gram-positive rod, forming no spores, catalase-negative. The name means acid-loving and it earns it: it grows below pH 4, which makes it the most forgiving of the fifteen for a cold, acidic product.
It is obligately homofermentative, taking sugar essentially to lactic acid alone and giving off no gas. It has no cytochromes and no respiratory enzymes at all.
Its supplier measures over 90% survival for an hour at pH 3 with pepsin, and over 90% in 0.3% bile salts. Those are the supplier’s own laboratory figures, not a measurement made in this bottle.
Studies
On this strain: a complete published genome of 1,991,830 base pairs, and a curiosity inside it. This strain is 99.98% identical to another commercial strain, NCFM, differing by 111 changes across two million letters. They are nonetheless separate organisms, and the supplier ran them as separate arms of the same trial. That trial is the only human study naming this strain; nine people were in its arm, and its main outcome was null.
On the species: very large, and much of the best of it belongs to NCFM rather than to this strain. We have deliberately not listed it.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
Described in 1919 by Sigurd Orla-Jensen as Betabacterium breve, and moved into Lactobacillus in 1934. In 2020 it moved again, into a new genus built around it, Levilactobacillus, of which it is the type species. The label still prints the 1934 name.Who discovered it
Sigurd Orla-Jensen, a Danish dairy microbiologist and chemical engineer at the Technical University of Denmark, in his 1919 monograph The Lactic Acid Bacteria, the book that set the framework this whole field still works inside. The 2020 genus is the work of Jinshui Zheng and fourteen colleagues.Where it is typically found
Unusually broad, and that is the interesting thing about it. Sauerkraut, where it dominates the late stages; kimchi, brined cucumbers and olives; sourdough; grass and maize silage; makgeolli and other rice ferments; raw milk and some cheeses; the human gut and saliva; and the guts of fruit flies. It is also the organism breweries watch for. It tolerates hops, and a brewer would call it spoilage.The science
A short rod, which is what brevis means. It is obligately heterofermentative, using the phosphoketolase route rather than glycolysis and producing roughly equal parts lactate, acetate or ethanol, and carbon dioxide. That last one is a real consideration in a sealed bottle.
Genomes across the species run 2.27 to 2.79 million base pairs at about 46% GC. The strains that spoil beer carry hop-resistance genes the others lack, and measurably larger genomes to hold them.
Studies
On this strain: one dataset, and it is unflattering. Its supplier compared it against two other strains and found it carries the genes for making GABA in duplicate but never switches them on, even when handed the raw material, while the comparator strain did. In the same work it lost about two orders of magnitude of viability over three hours at pH 3, where the comparator lost under one percent (Banerjee et al., Microb Cell Fact, 2021). No human trial located.
On the species: substantial, and belonging to other strains. We have deliberately not listed it.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
It spent decades hidden inside Lactobacillus acidophilus, indistinguishable from it by eye and by the ordinary tests. Enzyme electrophoresis in 1970 and DNA hybridisation in 1980 finally pulled it out, and Ewald Lauer and Otto Kandler named it in 1980. Like acidophilus, it kept the name Lactobacillus through the 2020 split.Who discovered it
Ewald Lauer and Otto Kandler, in Munich. Kandler was one of the central figures in twentieth-century bacterial taxonomy, the same Kandler who, with Carl Woese and Mark Wheelis, proposed the three domains of life in 1990. The species is named for F. Gasser, a French bacteriologist at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, whose 1970 work on lactate dehydrogenases made the separation possible.Where it is typically found
Human, and narrowly so. The gastrointestinal tract, where it is a genuine resident rather than a passer-through, and the mouth. Unlike most of this list it has no career in food fermentation at all; there is no sauerkraut or sourdough story here. It is a human organism that ended up in products, rather than a food organism that ended up in people.The science
A Gram-positive rod. Its genome is small and unusually AT-rich, 1,894,360 base pairs at 35.3% GC in the type strain, carrying no plasmid at all, which is the signature of an organism that has settled into a host and shed what it no longer needs.
It is obligately homofermentative, taking glucose to over 85% lactic acid with no carbon dioxide.
The type strain carries fourteen putative mucus-binding proteins, more than any lactobacillus sequenced at the time, and it lacks the surface-layer proteins its acidophilus relatives have. That absence is part of what tells the two apart.
Studies
On this strain: none located, and that is worth saying rather than leaving blank. No published study names it, no culture-collection deposit is public, and no isolation source has been published.
On the species: a good deal, all of it belonging to other strains, which we have deliberately not listed. Worth noting that the type strain of this species produced no detectable bacteriocin at all, a reminder that what one strain does, another may simply not.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
Described in 1963 by Gerhard Reuter in Berlin, in the same systematic survey of human bifidobacteria that produced the Bifidobacterium longum on this list. Bifidobacteria sit in a different phylum from the lactobacilli here and were untouched by the 2020 renaming, so this one has been Bifidobacterium breve continuously since 1963.Who discovered it
Gerhard Reuter, a German veterinary and food microbiologist who later held the chair of food hygiene at the Free University of Berlin. He is the fourth organism on this list to trace back to him, and the Limosilactobacillus reuteri at the top carries his name.Where it is typically found
The human gut, more narrowly than most of this list. It is not a native of fermented food; there is no sauerkraut, sourdough or silage story here, and wherever it turns up in a food, somebody added it.The science
Named for its shape: breve, short. Like the other bifidobacteria it runs the bifid shunt, and the arithmetic is worth spelling out, two glucose give three acetate and two lactate, so its output is acetate-dominant rather than lactate-dominant. That sets it apart from every lactobacillus on this list.
Its genome runs 2.29 to 2.42 million base pairs at about 58% GC. That high GC is a signature of its phylum and a sharp contrast with the AT-rich lactobacilli beside it, the Lactobacillus gasseri on this list sits at 35%.
It is a genuine anaerobe rather than merely oxygen-tolerant, which is the most demanding thing about keeping it alive in a bottle.
Studies
On this strain: none located. No published study names it, and no public deposit was found.
On the species: a real body of work, and almost all of it belongs either to other strains or to multi-strain mixtures, where no single organism’s contribution can be separated from the rest. We have deliberately not listed it.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
The name means of cheese. Orla-Jensen established the organism in 1916, but Lactobacillus casei was in informal use for about fifty years before Hansen and Lessel formally published it in 1971. In 2020 it became Lacticaseibacillus casei, and the type species of that new genus.Who discovered it
Sigurd Orla-Jensen, in Copenhagen, again; he stands behind three organisms on this list and the genus Bifidobacterium as well. P. Arne Hansen and E. F. Lessel published the combination in 1971, noting it had been in use for half a century with no formal standing. The current genus is Zheng and colleagues, 2020.Where it is typically found
Ripened cheese above all, where it is the commonest bacterium nobody deliberately added, Cheddar, the Grana-type cheeses and many semi-hard varieties. Also fermented milks, silage, pickles and fermented vegetables, fermented cereal and soy, wine, and the human gut and mouth.The science
A Gram-positive rod. It is facultatively heterofermentative: six-carbon sugars go almost entirely to lactic acid by glycolysis, while five-carbon sugars can be routed through a second pathway it switches on when needed.
It grows between roughly 15 and 45°C, and produces acetoin and diacetyl. It ferments glucose, galactose, fructose, mannose, lactose and trehalose, and does not ferment arabinose, xylose or sorbitol.
Studies
On this strain: one human trial, in which it was one of five organisms in a single capsule, so nothing in it can be attributed to this strain by itself. No published genome, no published isolation source, no public deposit number.
On the species: large and, unusually, unreliable. The names casei, paracasei and rhamnosus were disputed from 1916 until a formal ruling in 2008, and a great deal of work published under casei in that window actually used one of the other two. The famous strains people mean by this name (Shirota, and the one in Actimel) are not this one. We have deliberately not listed any of it.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
Described in 1953 at the National Institute of Dental Research in Bethesda, Maryland, out of a survey of the lactobacilli of the human mouth, which is why it is called salivarius. In 2020 it became the type species of a new genus, Ligilactobacillus.Who discovered it
Morrison Rogosa, with R. F. Wiseman, Joyce A. Mitchell, M. N. Disraely and A. J. Beaman. Rogosa is the same bacteriologist behind Rogosa agar, which is still the standard selective medium for growing lactobacilli, a good deal of what is known about every organism on this list was grown on it.Where it is typically found
The human mouth and the small intestine, particularly the ileum. Most of this list is associated with the colon; this one sits higher up. Beyond people it is a well-known resident of birds (chickens, geese, turkeys, ducks and pigeons) and of pigs, cattle and honeybees. Also wine, fermented meats and cheese.The science
A Gram-positive rod with a small, notably low-GC genome, around 1.99 million base pairs at 32.8% GC.
Its distinguishing feature is a megaplasmid. Alongside its chromosome it carries a large second replicon, 242,000 base pairs in the reference strain, which is about eleven percent of the entire genome. A survey of thirty-three strains taken from people and animals found that every single one carried one, averaging 218,000 base pairs.
That plasmid also settled an old question. The species was described in 1953 as homofermentative, and the plasmid turned out to carry the enzymes that finish the pentose phosphate pathway, so it can in fact ferment both ways. Some supplier documentation still calls it homofermentative.
This strain produces only L(+)-lactic acid, with no D-isomer at all.
Studies
On this strain: two human trials, both essentially null on what they set out to measure, and a supplier dossier reporting over 70% survival for an hour at pH 3 with pepsin and over 80% in 0.3% bile salts. That same technical sheet states the strain was originally isolated from an unknown source, a company recording, in print, that it does not know where its own organism came from.
On the species: rich on genome and ecology, thin on people. We have deliberately not listed the rest.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
This one was a species in its own right for seven years. Leo Meile and colleagues in Switzerland described Bifidobacterium lactis in 1997, from an isolate out of a French yoghurt. In 2004 Leen Masco and colleagues showed it belonged inside Bifidobacterium animalis and reduced it to a subspecies of it. Commercial labels overwhelmingly still print the 1997 name. This one does not.Who discovered it
Leo Meile, Michael Teuber and colleagues in Switzerland, in 1997. The parent species had been described by Tomotari Mitsuoka in Japan in 1969 and validated by Vittorio Scardovi and L. D. Trovatelli in Bologna in 1974. The 2004 reclassification is Leen Masco, Marco Ventura, Ralf Zink, Geert Huys and Jean Swings.Where it is typically found
Fermented milk and yoghurt (the type strain came out of a French yoghurt) and through them most of the world’s commercial probiotic dairy. The parent species lives in the guts of a range of animals, which is what animalis records. In people it is generally a dairy organism passing through rather than a native resident.The science
It runs the bifid shunt like the other bifidobacteria here, yielding acetate and lactate in a theoretical three-to-two ratio.
The thing that matters most about it is oxygen. Bifidobacteria are anaerobes, and that is the central difficulty in putting them into food at all. This one was described in 1997 specifically as moderately oxygen-tolerant, growing above 5% oxygen under oxidative stress, and that tolerance is the whole reason this subspecies, rather than a fussier relative, dominates the world’s refrigerated probiotic foods.
Its genome is about 1.94 million base pairs at roughly 60% GC. It differs from the subspecies type strain by nine base changes, only one of which alters a protein: a single substitution in a putative sugar-cutting enzyme. Strains here are very nearly identical to one another, which is a good reason to be careful about claiming any one of them is special.
Studies
On this strain: one of the most thoroughly documented commercial probiotic organisms there is, a published genome, comparative genomics against its own relatives, and a decade of work on how it sticks to things. Most of its human trials gave it alongside other organisms, so they say little about it on its own.
On the species: extensive, and a minefield of near-namesakes. BB-12, HN019, Bl-04, B420 and the strain in Activia are all this same subspecies and none of them is this one. A widely repeated result from a 2014 trial belongs to Bl-04; the arm containing this strain showed no difference from placebo. We have deliberately not listed any of it.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
Described in 1968 by P. A. Hansen, through the American Type Culture Collection in Rockville, Maryland. It was a subspecies of Lactobacillus casei then. It became a species of its own in 1989, and moved to the genus Lacticaseibacillus in 2020, when the old Lactobacillus genus was split into twenty-five.Who discovered it
P. A. Hansen, a bacteriologist who chaired the international committee on lactobacilli, wrote the 1968 description. Matthew Collins, with B. A. Phillips and P. Zanoni, raised it to species rank in 1989 using DNA homology. The 2020 name is the work of Jinshui Zheng, Sarah Lebeer, Michael Gänzle and twelve colleagues.Where it is typically found
Long-ripened cheeses, including Cheddar, Grana Padano and Parmigiano-Reggiano, where it lives on what the starter cultures leave behind. Also fermented milks, sourdough, silage and sauerkraut. In people it is a normal minority resident of the gut, and at least as much a mouth organism as a gut one, turning up in saliva and plaque.The science
A Gram-positive rod, often in chains, that forms no spores and tolerates oxygen. It ferments rhamnose, the sugar it is named after. It grows between roughly 15 and 45°C, and growth at 45°C is the bench test that separates it from its close relatives L. casei and L. paracasei.
Studies
On this strain: one laboratory study on human gum cells, which found the strain’s components inhibited a target bacterium but also raised inflammatory markers and reduced host-cell viability (Vale & Mayer, Arch Oral Biol, 2021). One study in laying hens (Chen et al., Front Microbiol, 2023). No human trial located. No published genome, no public deposit.
On the species: most published work concerns a different strain, GG, which is not what we use. We have deliberately not listed it.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
Separated from Lactobacillus casei in 1989, on DNA evidence. The name means "resembling casei", which tells you the problem. The boundary between the two was disputed for nearly twenty years, with formal petitions to abolish this name in 1991 and again in 1996. An international commission settled it in 2008 and the name stood.Who discovered it
Matthew Collins, with B. A. Phillips and P. Zanoni, in the same 1989 paper that separated L. rhamnosus. The challenges came from Franco Dellaglio and Sandra Torriani in Verona and Leon Dicks in Stellenbosch. The Judicial Commission of the International Committee on Systematics of Bacteria ruled in 2008 that the name stands. The current genus name is from Zheng and colleagues, 2020.Where it is typically found
Ripened cheese, where it is usually the most abundant bacterium that nobody deliberately added. It grows slowly on what the starter cultures leave behind in Cheddar, Grana Padano and Parmigiano-Reggiano, and contributes to how they taste. Also raw milk, fermented sausage, kimchi, sauerkraut, olives, silage and sourdough, plus the human gut and mouth.The science
A Gram-positive rod, non-motile, forming no spores. It produces only L(+)-lactic acid. Unlike its close relative L. rhamnosus it does not grow at 45°C, which is the standard bench test that tells the two apart.
This strain’s genome has been sequenced: a 3,112,081 base-pair chromosome plus a 48,752 base-pair plasmid, carrying 3,153 annotated features.
Studies
On this strain: the best-documented organism in this blend. It has a culture-collection deposit (ATCC SD5275), a published genome, a compendial identity in the USP National Formulary, and a published genomic and toxicological safety evaluation (Morovic et al., Food Chem Toxicol, 2017). Two dedicated human trials have been run. Both missed their primary endpoints.
On the species: a large literature, complicated by the fact that much work published as L. casei used organisms that are paracasei under current taxonomy.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
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Where it was discovered
Described by Sigurd Orla-Jensen in 1919 as Streptobacterium plantarum, and known as Lactobacillus plantarum from 1923 until 2020, when it moved into a genus built around it, Lactiplantibacillus. That is the most recent name change on this label.Who discovered it
Sigurd Orla-Jensen, in Copenhagen, in his 1919 monograph The Lactic Acid Bacteria, the first serious attempt to classify these organisms by what they do rather than by the food they happened to be found in. Most of the genus names on this list trace back to that book. The 2020 genus is Zheng and colleagues.Where it is typically found
Plants, which is what plantarum means, and everything that happens to them. It is the dominant organism in most spontaneous vegetable fermentations (sauerkraut, kimchi, brined olives, pickles) and in sourdough starters, cheeses, fermented sausages and silage, where it takes over within about two days. Also the human gut and saliva. This is the broadest set of food associations on the list.The science
The literature calls it nomadic. It persists across plants, insects and vertebrate guts instead of specialising in any one of them, and the reason is in the genome: at about 3.3 million base pairs and 3,063 protein-coding genes it is one of the largest among the lactic acid bacteria, carrying machinery for far more substrates than a specialist would need.
It is facultatively heterofermentative and makes both D- and L-lactic acid. Given heme and menaquinone it can even respire oxygen, which is rare in this company.
It handles oxygen unusually in another way too. Rather than the superoxide dismutase most organisms rely on, it accumulates millimolar quantities of manganese polyphosphate to mop up superoxide. It grows between 12 and 40°C and tolerates pH from 3.4 to 8.8.
Studies
On this strain: a supplier dossier reporting over 90% survival for an hour at pH 3 with pepsin and over 90% in 0.3% bile salts, and, more to the point for a product like this one, published work on how well it survives being fermented into carrot juice and held in a refrigerated coconut-water drink. Its deposit number is recorded two different ways in two different supplier documents, which has not been reconciled.
On the species: one of the largest literatures in the field, and almost none of it attaches to this strain. We have deliberately not listed it.
These are studies on the bacteria, not on Doctor’s Biome. We did not run, author or fund them. A finding about one strain is not a finding about another, and we have said which is which. This is here as scientific background, not as a reason to buy anything.
Our Red Juice Base: organic watermelon juice, organic apple juice, organic pomegranate juice, organic beet juice, organic strawberry juice, organic cranberry powder.
*at the time of manufacture
Meet the doctors
When we said doctors developed it, we meant it.
I had been looking for a quality probiotic that really worked since 1995. I tried just about everything, and that’s why we created Doctor’s Biome.
One of the world’s leading authorities on ozone therapy, in practice in New York City since 1973. He spent decades trying everything on the shelf, concluded none of it worked, and set out to build the one he couldn’t find.
- Internationally recognised expert in ozone therapy
- In practice since 1973 · co-author of two books
Keeping a culture alive from the tank to the bottle is a formulation problem before it is a packaging one.
The formulation half of the partnership. Four degrees in nutrition, four decades engineering functional ingredients through some of food science's hardest problems, and the one who solved how to keep a living culture alive in the bottle instead of drying it out and hoping.
- Doctorate in food science and technology, MIT
- Contributor to a NASA-sponsored space-habitat food project
Making something this alive, at this scale, repeatably, is the hard part. That is the job.
The manufacturing half of it. Twenty years building and running FDA-registered, GMP-compliant facilities, with deep expertise across 21 CFR 111 and 21 CFR 117, the exact regulations that decide whether a living culture survives production intact or dies somewhere upstream before it ever reaches a bottle.
- Naturopathic doctor · 21 CFR 111 & 117 compliance expert
- Built and runs the GMP facility that produces it
Questions?We have answers
What are the ingredients in Doctor’s Biome Women’s Health?
Red juice base: organic watermelon juice, organic apple juice, organic pomegranate juice, organic beet juice, organic strawberry juice, organic cranberry powder.
Fifteen live cultures, the same fifteen as Gut Health. Contains 95% juice. 30 calories, 4g of sugar and none of it added. No gluten, dairy, corn, preservatives or added sugar.
When you say Living Probiotics, what do you mean?
Most probiotics are processed into an inactive state and have to come back to life before they can do anything. In tablet, powder or capsule form they sit in a kind of suspended animation: technically alive, but far less likely to make it through the stomach intact.
Every bottle of Doctor's Biome starts with real pressed juice, blended with 15 strains of live cultures and kept cold from our facility to your door, alive the whole way. That is the case for living, liquid probiotics: consumed alive, they are built to survive the trip to your gut.
Is Doctor's Biome a food or a supplement?
A food. Doctor's Biome is a juice beverage with live cultures, not a dietary supplement.
Can I travel with it?
Yes, provided it stays cold the whole way. We recommend keeping Doctor’s Biome refrigerated, and travelling with it is no different from travelling with anything else that lives in a fridge.
It is a food rather than a bottle of pills, so if you are crossing a border, check what the country you are going to allows you to bring in.
My order arrived warm. Is it still good?
Your order ships cold, with ice packs, to keep it at its best in transit. If it arrives feeling less than cold, that’s normal for shipping. Just refrigerate it when it arrives. We recommend keeping Doctor’s Biome refrigerated.
Why is it so expensive?
Four things, and the last one is the one people do not expect.
The cultures are specialized, semi-rare and expensive. The juice is cold-pressed organic juice. Shipping cold runs about five times what shipping ambient costs. It has to be made in small batches, in a facility that is not making fifty other things at the same time.
And it is bottled one dose at a time, which is the expensive way to do it. A thirty day bottle would be far cheaper to make and to ship. It is also not an option: every time that bottle was opened and closed you would let something new in, and in a living product that something can grow.
What is the 30-day guarantee?
The full terms, including what to send us and where, are on the guarantee page.
The original green one
Gut Health
Same fifteen strains, on a cold-pressed green juice base.
$179.99for 30 bottles
Shop Now30Day Guarantee
We wouldn't ask you to believe in it if we didn't.
Drink it for thirty days. If it isn't for you, we'll refund you.
Read the terms