Antimicrobial Effect and Probiotic Potential of Phage Resistant Lactobacillus plantarum and its Interactions with Zoonotic Bacterial Pathogens

Vinod Nagarajan; Mengfei Peng; Zajeba Tabashsum; Serajus Salaheen; Joselyn Padilla; Debabrata Biswas

doi:10.3390/foods8060194

Antimicrobial Effect and Probiotic Potential of Phage Resistant Lactobacillus plantarum and its Interactions with Zoonotic Bacterial Pathogens

Foods. 2019 Jun 5;8(6):194. doi: 10.3390/foods8060194.

Authors

Vinod Nagarajan¹, Mengfei Peng², Zajeba Tabashsum³, Serajus Salaheen⁴, Joselyn Padilla⁵, Debabrata Biswas^{6

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Affiliations

¹ Department of Animal and Avian Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. biovinz@gmail.com.
² Department of Animal and Avian Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. murphy7@umd.edu.
³ Biological Sciences Program, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. ztabashs@terpmail.umd.edu.
⁴ Department of Animal and Avian Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. salaheen@umd.edu.
⁵ Biological Sciences Program, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. joselyn0520@hotmail.com.
⁶ Department of Animal and Avian Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. dbiswas@umd.edu.
⁷ Biological Sciences Program, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. dbiswas@umd.edu.
⁸ Centre for Food Safety and Security Systems, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. dbiswas@umd.edu.

Abstract

Development of phage-resistant probiotic particularly Lactobacillus is an alternative approach to enhance their beneficial effects as in animal feed supplements. In this study, we developed phage-resistant Lactobacillus plantarum (LP^+PR) mutant and compared their antimicrobial effects and probiotic potential against zoonotic bacterial pathogens including Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC), Staphylococcus aureus, and Listeria monocytogenes with phage-sensitive L. plantarum (LP) strain. LP^+PR strain showed markedly higher growth rate than wild-type LP strain. In co-culture with LP^+PR and in the presence of cell-free cultural supernatants (CFCSs) of LP^+PR, the growth of S. Typhimurium, EHEC, S. aureus, and L. monocytogenes were reduced significantly (P < 0.05). The adhesion ability of LP^+PR was slightly higher than the LP on human epithelial INT-407 cells. Most importantly, LP^+PR strain significantly inhibited the adhesive and invasive abilities of all four zoonotic pathogens to INT-407 cells (P < 0.05). Moreover, real-time qPCR revealed that in the presence of LP^+PR strain or its CFCSs, expression of virulence genes of these zoonotic bacterial pathogens were suppressed significantly (P < 0.05). These findings suggest that the LP^+PR strain is capable of inhibiting major zoonotic bacterial pathogens efficiently and would be a potential candidate for industrial usage in animal production or fermentation.

Keywords: Lactobacillus plantarum; bacteriophage; probiotic; zoonotic bacterial pathogen.