Bacillus subtilis BS-15 Effectively Improves Plantaricin Production and the Regulatory Biosynthesis in Lactiplantibacillus plantarum RX-8

• Published in: Frontiers in microbiology Vol. 12; p. 772546
• Main Authors: Liu, Guorong, Nie, Rong, Liu, Yangshuo, Li, Xue, Duan, Jiaojiao, Hao, Xu, Shan, Yumeng, Zhang, Jingying
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 28-01-2022
• Subjects: bacteriocin; biopreservation; co-culture; Microbiology; proteome; quorum sensing; quorum sensing; bacteriocin; co-culture; biopreservation; proteome
• ISSN: 1664-302X; 1664-302X
• DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.772546

Plantaricin is a broad-spectrum bacteriocin produced by
with significant food industry application potential. It was found that the plantaricin production of
RX-8 was enhanced when co-culturing with
BS-15. This study, therefore, set out to explore how
BS-15 induces biosynthesis of plantaricin. The effect of co-culturing with
BS-15 on cell growth, plantaricin production, quorum-sensing (QS) signal molecule PlnA/autoinducer-2 (AI-2) secretion, as well as plantaricin biosynthesis gene cluster and AI-2 synthesis-associated gene expression, was investigated in bacteriocin-producer
RX-8. When
RX-8 and
BS-15 were co-inoculated in Man-Rogosa-Sharp (MRS) for 20 h at an inoculum ratio of 1:1 (10
:10
CFU/ml), the greatest plantaricin output (2,048 AU/ml) was obtained, rising by 32-fold compared with the monoculture of
RX-8. Additionally, co-culture increased PlnA-inducing activity and AI-2 activity by 8- and 1.14-fold, respectively, over monoculture. RT-qPCR findings generated every 4 h (4-32 h) demonstrated that
BS-15 remarkably improved the transcription of
and
, and increased
and
transcription, even when using 200 mM D-ribose, a kind of AI-2 inhibitor. Based on the above findings, co-culturing with
BS-15 as an environmental stimulus could activate the plantaricin induction
the PlnA-mediated intraspecies QS system and the AI-2-mediated interspecies QS system. Moreover, the inducing effect of PlnA and AI-2 in co-culture was independent. Differential proteomics analysis of
BS-15 in co-culture indicated that bacteriocin-inducing regulatory mechanism may be related to flagellar assembly, peptidoglycan biosynthesis, anaerobic respiration, glycine cleavage system, or thiamin pyrophosphate biosynthesis.