was a Japanese microbiologist. In the 1930 Shirota identified a strain of

lactic acid bacteria Lactobacillales are an order of gram-positive, low-GC, acid-tolerant, generally nonsporulating, nonrespiring, either rod-shaped (bacilli) or spherical (cocci) bacteria that share common metabolic and physiological characteristics. These bacte ...

that is part of normal

gut flora Gut microbiota, gut microbiome, or gut flora, are the microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses that live in the digestive tracts of animals. The gastrointestinal metagenome is the aggregate of all the genomes of the gut mi ...

that he originally called ''

Lactobacillus casei ''Lacticaseibacillus casei ''is an organism that belongs to the largest genus in the family ''Lactobacillaceae'', a lactic acid bacteria (LAB), that was previously classified as ''Lactobacillus casei-01''. This bacteria has been identified as facu ...

Shirota,'' which appeared to help contain the growth of harmful bacteria in the gut. The strain was later reclassified as '' Lactobacillus paracasei Shirota''. Lay summary: He founded the company

Yakult Honsha Yakult Honsha is a Japanese company founded in 1955 to sell its flagship product, Yakult—a beverage made using industrial lactic milk, a bacterial strain discovered by Minoru Shirota in the 1920s. Yakult Honsha is a multinational corporation ...

in 1935 to sell beverages containing the strain branded

Yakult is a Japanese sweetened probiotic milk beverage fermented with the bacteria strain '' Lacticaseibacillus casei'' Shirota. It is sold by Yakult Honsha, based in Tokyo. It is distributed through convenience stores and supermarkets in single-servin ...

. He died in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, Japan in 1982.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shirota, Minoru 1899 births 1982 deaths Japanese military doctors Japanese microbiologists People from Iida, Nagano Japanese inventors