Bile salt is an organic sodium salt with a conjugate of any of the bile acids along with either glycine or taurine. Biles salts are composed of four different kinds of bile acids – cholic, deoxycholic, chenodeoxycholic and lithocholic acids.
Bile salts are extracted under controlled conditions from purified fresh bile, to be used in bacteriological culture media, where it behaves as a selective inhibitory agent that enables isolation and identification of pathogens. For example, in MacConkey Agar/Broth.