The Enterococcus faecium strain DMEA09 was previously isolated from traditional Korean fermented meju. The objective of the current study was to investigate the traits of E. faecium strain DMEA09 as a starter candidate, focusing on its safety and technological properties. Regarding its safety, the DMEA09 strain was found to be sensitive to nine antibiotics (ampicillin, chloramphenicol, erythromycin, gentamicin, kanamycin, streptomycin, tetracycline, tylosin, and vancomycin) by showing lower minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) than the cut-off values suggested by the European Union Food Safety Authority for these nine antibiotics. However, its MIC value for clindamycin was twice as high as the cut-off value. A genomic analysis revealed that strain DMEA09 did not encode the acquired antibiotic resistance genes, including those for clindamycin. The DMEA09 strain did not show hemolysis as a result of analyzing α- and β-hemolysis. It did not form biofilm either. A genomic analysis revealed that strain DMEA09 did not encode for any virulence factors including hemolysin. Most importantly, multilocus sequence typing revealed that the clonal group of strain DMEA09 was distinguished from clinical isolates. Regarding its technological properties, strain DMEA09 could grow in the presence of 6% salt. It showed protease activity when the salt concentration was 3%. It did not exhibit lipase activity. Its genome possessed 37 putative protease genes and salt-tolerance genes for survivability under salt conditions. Consequently, strain DMEA09 shows safe and technological properties as a new starter candidate. This was confirmed by genome analysis.
Keywords: Enterococcus faecium strain DMEA09; antibiotic susceptibility; meju; protease; starter.