0000000000786416
AUTHOR
Pascal Hols
Screening and Construction of Probiotic Strains with Enhanced Protective Properties against Intestinal Disorders
Within the scope of the DEPROHEALTH project, a range of wild-type strains of Lactobacillus were analysed for their ability to interact with the host immune system. While the studied isolates interacted in a strain-specific way with immune cells, they seemed to have little and non-discriminative effect on epithelial cells. However, they were shown to facilitate the cross-talk between intestinal and immune cells. Studies conducted in mouse colitis models confirmed that specific strains possess higher intrinsic anti-inflammatory properties. Two of these were further engineered to produce murine IL10 and are presently being evaluated for their protective effect in a TNBS colitis model. Cell wal…
Inactivation of a small heat shock protein affects cell morphology and membrane fluidity in Lactobacillus plantarum WCFS1.
A small heat shock gene of Lactobacillus plantarum strain WCFS1 was deleted using a Cre-lox based system. Compared to the wild type, the ∆hsp 18.55 mutant strain displayed a similar growth rate when cultivated either under optimal temperature or under different stress conditions such as heat, low pH and salt stress. However, a longer lag phase was observed when the ∆hsp 18.55 mutant strain was cultivated under short intense heat stress (50 °C). This suggests that the hsp 18.55 gene of L. plantarum may be involved in recovery of L. plantarum stressed cells in the early stage of high temperature stress. In addition, morphology of the mutant cells, investigated by scanning electron microscopy,…
Discovering lactic acid bacteria by genomics
International audience; This review summarizes a collection of lactic acid bacteria that are now undergoing genomic sequencing and analysis. Summaries are presented on twenty different species, with each overview discussing the organisms fundamental and practical significance, environmental habitat, and its role in fermentation, bioprocessing, or probiotics. For those projects where genome sequence data were available by March 2002, summaries include a listing of key statistics and interesting genomic features. These efforts will revolutionize our molecular view of Gram-positive bacteria, as up to 15 genomes from the low GC content lactic acid bacteria are expected to be available in the pu…
Characterization of the CtsR stress response regulon in Lactobacillus plantarum.
ABSTRACT Lactobacillus plantarum ctsR was characterized. ctsR was found to be cotranscribed with clpC and induced in response to various abiotic stresses. ctsR deletion conferred a heat-sensitive phenotype with peculiar cell morphological features. The transcriptional pattern of putative CtsR regulon genes was examined in the Δ ctsR mutant. Direct CtsR-dependent regulation was demonstrated by DNA-binding assays using recombinant CtsR and the promoters of the ctsR - clpC operon and hsp1 .