Bacteriocins: Potential for Human Health

Abstract

Due to the challenges of antibiotic resistance to global health, bacteriocins as antimicrobial compounds have received more and more attention. Bacteriocins are biosynthesized by various microbes and are predominantly used as food preservatives to control foodborne pathogens. Now, increasing researches have focused on bacteriocins as potential clinical antimicrobials or immune-modulating agents to fight against the global threat to human health. Given the broad- or narrow-spectrum antimicrobial activity, bacteriocins have been reported to inhibit a wide range of clinically pathogenic and multidrug-resistant bacteria, thus preventing the infections caused by these bacteria in the human body. Otherwise, some bacteriocins also show anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and immune-modulatory activities. Because of the safety and being not easy to cause drug resistance, some bacteriocins appear to have better efficacy and application prospects than existing therapeutic agents do. In this review, we highlight the potential therapeutic activities of bacteriocins and suggest opportunities for their application.

A novel bacteriocin produced by Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis has dual antimicrobial and immunomodulatory activity

“…Previous work has indicated that bacteriocins are non-toxic to eukaryotic cells, and limited number of reports suggested that these peptides might modulate host cell responses ( 4, 21, 40 ). Although Bifidobacterium is abundant in the colon, we did not observe any modulation of Caco2 responses following treatment with Bifidococcin_664, suggesting these host cells may not play a role in bacteriocin-host crosstalk (albeit these are a colonic cancer cell line and thus are not fully representative of the colonic epithelium).…”

Multi-Strain Probiotic Supplementation with a Product Containing Human-Native S. salivarius K12 in Healthy Adults Increases Oral S. salivarius

“…Another limitation to this study is a lack of functional analyses to confirm that S. salivarius K12 is active in the oral mucosa. For example, peptidomics analyses could be useful to measure the lantibiotics salivaricin A and B, which are known to be produced by S. salivarius K12; this may be of particular importance given the antibacterial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, and immunomodulatory capacity of some bacteriocins [26].…”

Probiotics, Their Extracellular Vesicles and Infectious Diseases

“…Antimicrobial agents mainly include reactive oxygen species, lactic acid, and bacteriocins ( Rajilić-Stojanović, 2013 ). Bacteriocins are peptides with antimicrobial activity that have shown to inhibit not only bacteria, but also viruses, fungi and parasites ( Dicks and Grobbelaar, 2021 ; Huang et al, 2021 ). Furthermore, bacteriocins might be an interesting alternative to the use of antibiotics for infectious diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria due to their high potency and low toxicity ( Cui et al, 2021 ; Gradisteanu Pircalabioru et al, 2021 ).…”

“…As far as we know, there are differences in EV metabolite, nucleic acid and protein content compared with that of the bacterial cell ( Briaud and Carroll, 2020 ). The relative abundance of certain components suggests not only a possible sorting mechanism to package EV cargo, but also a special biological role for EVs ( Kim et al, 2018 ; Huang et al, 2021 ). For example, EVs from L. rhamnosus GG contain high levels of tryptophan metabolites that lead to an improved barrier function ( Gu et al, 2021 ).…”