Project description:Over the past decade, a variety of lactic acid bacteria have been commercially available to and steadily used by consumers. However, recent studies have shown that some lactic acid bacteria produce toxic substances and display properties of virulence. To establish safety guidelines for lactic acid bacteria, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)/World Health Organization (WHO) has suggested that lactic acid bacteria be characterized and proven safe for consumers’ health via multiple experiments (e.g., antibiotic resistance, metabolic activity, toxin production, hemolytic activity, infectivity in immune-compromised animal species, human side effects, and adverse-outcome analyses). Among the lactic acid bacteria, Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus species are probiotic strains that are most commonly commercially produced and actively studied. Bifidobacterium bifidum BGN4 and Bifidobacterium longum BORI have been used in global functional food markets (e.g., China, Germany, Jordan, Korea, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam) as nutraceutical ingredients for decades, without any adverse events. However, given that the safety of some newly screened probiotic species has recently been debated, it is crucial that the consumer safety of each commercially utilized strain be confirmed. Accordingly, this paper details a safety assessment of B. bifidum BGN4 and B. longum BORI via the assessment of ammonia production, hemolysis of blood cells, biogenic amine production, antimicrobial susceptibility pattern, antibiotic resistance gene transferability, PCR data on antibiotic resistance genes, mucin degradation, genome stability, and possession of virulence factors. These probiotic strains showed neither hemolytic activity nor mucin degradation activity, and they did not produce ammonia or biogenic amines (i.e., cadaverine, histamine or tyramine). B. bifidum BGN4 and B. longum BORI produced a small amount of putrescine, commonly found in living cells, at levels similar to or lower than that found in other foods (e.g., spinach, ketchup, green pea, sauerkraut, and sausage). B. bifidum BGN4 showed higher resistance to gentamicin than the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) cut-off. However, this paper shows the gentamicin resistance of B. bifidum BGN4 was not transferred via conjugation with L. acidophilus ATCC 4356, the latter of which is highly susceptible to gentamicin. The entire genomic sequence of B. bifidum BGN4 has been published in GenBank (accession no.: CP001361.1), documenting the lack of retention of plasmids capable of transferring an antibiotic-resistant gene. Moreover, there was little genetic mutation between the first and 25th generations of B. bifidum BGN4. Tetracycline-resistant genes are prevalent among B. longum strains; B. longum BORI has a tet(W) gene on its chromosome DNA and has also shown resistance to tetracycline. However, this research shows that its tetracycline resistance was not transferred via conjugation with L. fermentum AGBG1, the latter of which is highly sensitive to tetracycline. These findings support the continuous use of B. bifidum BGN4 and B. longum BORI as probiotics, both of which have been reported as safe by several clinical studies, and have been used in food supplements for many years.

Project description:Bifidobacteria constitute commensal bacteria that commonly inhabit the mammalian gastro intestinal tract. The gut commensal Bifidobacterium breve UCC2003 was previously shown to utilise a variety of plant/diet-derived carbohydrates, including cellodextrin, starch and galactan. In the current study, we investigated the ability of this strain to utilize (parts of) a host-derived source of carbohydrate, namely the mucin glycoprotein. Here, we demonstrate that B. breve UCC2003 exhibits growth properties in a mucin-based medium, but only when in the presence of Bifidobacterium bifidum PRL2010, which is known to metabolize mucin. Based on HPAEC analysis, transcriptome data and insertion mutagenesis, it appears that B. breve UCC2003 sustains this improved survival in co-culture by cross-feeding on a combination of fucose, sialic acid and galactose-containing oligosaccharides. DNA-microarrays containing oligonucleotide primers representing each of the 1864 annotated genes on the genome of B. breve UCC2003 (O'Connell Motherway et al., 2011) were designed by and obtained from Agilent Technologies (Palo Alto, Ca., USA). Methods for cell disruption, RNA isolation, RNA quality control, complementary DNA synthesis and labeling were performed as described previously (Pokusaeva et al., 2009). Labeled cDNA was hybridized using the Agilent Gene Expression hybridization kit (part number 5188-5242) as described in the Agilent Two-Color Microarray-Based Gene Expression Analysis v4.0 manual (G4140-90050). Following hybridization, microarrays were washed in accordance with Agilent’s standard procedures and scanned using an Agilent DNA microarray scanner (model G2565A). Generated scans were converted to data files with Agilent's Feature Extraction software (Version 9.5). DNA-microarray data were processed as previously described (Garcia De La Nava et al., 2003). Differential expression tests were performed with the Cyber-T implementation of a variant of the t-test (Long et al., 2001). A gene was considered differentially expressed when p < 0.001 and an expression ratio of >3 or <0.33 relative to the control.

Dataset Information

Bifidobacterium bifidum PRL2010

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets