Protective effect by Bacillus smithii TBMI12 spores of Salmonella serotype enteritidis in mice

Probiotic characterization of Bacillus smithii: Research advances, concerns, and prospective trends

Bacillus smithii is a thermophilic Bacillus that can be isolated from white wine, hot spring soil, high-temperature compost, and coffee grounds, with various biofunctions and wide applications. It is resistant to both gastric acid and high temperature, which makes it easier to perform probiotic effects than traditional commercial probiotics, so it can maintain good vitality during food processing and has great application prospects. This paper starts with the taxonomy and genetics and focuses on aspects, including genetic transformation, functional enzyme production, waste utilization, and application in the field of food science as a potential probiotic. According to available studies during the past 30 years, we considered that B. smithii is a novel class of microorganisms with a wide range of functional enzymes such as hydrolytic enzymes and hydrolases, as well as resistance to pathogenic bacteria. It is available in waste degradation, organic fertilizer production, the feed and chemical industries, the pharmaceutical sector, and food fortification. Moreover, B. smithii has great potentials for applications in the food industry, as it presents high resistance to the technological processes that guarantee its health benefits. It is also necessary to systematically evaluate the safety, flavor, and texture of B. smithii and explore its biological mechanism of action, which is of great value for further application in multiple fields, especially in food and medicine.

Diversity and evolutionary dynamics of spore-coat proteins in spore-forming species of Bacillales

Among members of the Bacillales order, there are several species capable of forming a structure called an endospore. Endospores enable bacteria to survive under unfavourable growth conditions and germinate when environmental conditions are favourable again. Spore-coat proteins are found in a multilayered proteinaceous structure encasing the spore core and the cortex. They are involved in coat assembly, cortex synthesis and germination. Here, we aimed to determine the diversity and evolutionary processes that have influenced spore-coat genes in various spore-forming species of Bacillales using an in silico approach. For this, we used sequence similarity searching algorithms to determine the diversity of coat genes across 161 genomes of Bacillales. The results suggest that among Bacillales, there is a well-conserved core genome, composed mainly by morphogenetic coat proteins and spore-coat proteins involved in germination. However, some spore-coat proteins are taxa-specific. The best-conserved genes among different species may promote adaptation to changeable environmental conditions. Because most of the Bacillus species harbour complete or almost complete sets of spore-coat genes, we focused on this genus in greater depth. Phylogenetic reconstruction revealed eight monophyletic groups in the Bacillus genus, of which three are newly discovered. We estimated the selection pressures acting over spore-coat genes in these monophyletic groups using classical and modern approaches and detected horizontal gene transfer (HGT) events, which have been further confirmed by scanning the genomes to find traces of insertion sequences. Although most of the genes are under purifying selection, there are several cases with individual sites evolving under positive selection. Finally, the HGT results confirm that sporulation is an ancestral feature in Bacillus.

Mortality and translocation assay to study the protective capacity of Bifidobacterium lactis INL1 against Salmonella Typhimurium infection in mice

The mouse has been largely used for the study of the protective capacity of probiotics against intestinal infections caused by Salmonella. In this work we aimed at comparing the mortality and translocation assay for the study of the protective capacity of the human breast milk-derived strain Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis INL1 on a model of gut infection by Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium. Different doses of S. Typhimurium FUNED and B. animalis subsp. lactis INL 1 were administered to Balb/c mice in a mortality or a translocation assay. The survival of the control group in the mortality assay resulted to be variable along experiments, and then we preferred to use a translocation assay where the preventive administration of 109 cfu of bifidobacteria/mouse for 10 consecutive days significantly reduced the number of infected animals and the levels of translocation to liver and spleen, with enhanced secretory immunoglobulin A and interleukin 10 production in the small and large intestine, respectively. Ten days of B. animalis subsp. lactis strain INL1 administration to mice significantly reduced both the incidence and the severity of Salmonella infection in a mouse model of translocation. This work provided the first evidence that a translocation assay, compared to a mortality assay, could be more useful to study the protective capacity of probiotics against Salmonella infection, as more information can be obtained from mice and less suffering is conferred to animals due to the fact that the mortality assay is shorter than the latter. These facts are in line with the guidelines of animal research recently established by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement & Reduction of Animals in Research.