Molecular approaches for identification and characterization of lactic acid bacteria

Abstract

The last few years have produced a revolution in the development of very sensitive, rapid, automated, molecular detection methods for a variety of various species of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) associated with food and dairy products. Nowadays many such strains of LAB are considered probiotics. The genome-based methods are useful in identifying bacteria as a complementary or alternative tool to phenotypical methods. Over the years, identification methodologies using primers that target different sequences, such as the 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA)-encoding gene, the 16S-23S rRNA intergenic spacer region, the 23S rRNA-encoding, recA and ldhD genes; randomly amplified polymorphic DNA, restriction fragment length polymorphism, denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, temperature gradient gel electrophoresis, amplification rDNA restriction analysis, restriction enzyme analysis, rRNA, pulse field gel electrophoresis and amplification fragment length polymorphism have played a significant role in probiotic bacteriology. Hence, the aim of this review is to provide an overview of some rapid and reliable polymerase chain reaction-based molecular methods used for identifying and differentiating closely related species and strains of LAB associated with food and industry.

Identification and characterization of the dominant lactic acid bacteria from kurut: The naturally fermented yak milk in Qinghai, China

“…Currently, with the rapid development of biotechnology, more and more molecular technology has been applied in genetic diversity research in LAB. DNA-based techniques, such as DNA-DNA hybridization analysis, rRNA homology analysis, plasmid profi ling and randomly amplifi ed polymorphic DNA analysis have been introduced to characterize LAB (Catzeddu et al, 2006;Mohania et al, 2008;Sugimoto et al, 2008;. In our research, we used physiological and molecular methods together.…”

Identification and characterization of the dominant lactobacilli isolated from koumiss in China

“…Phylogenetic tree based on 16S rRNA sequence analyses, showing the phylogenetic placement of representative strains isolated from koumiss. Lactobacilli in koumiss search in Lactobacillus, such as DNA DNA hybridization analysis, plasmid profi ling and randomly amplifi ed polymorphic DNA analysis (Catzeddu et al, 2006;Mohania et al, 2008;Sugimoto et al, 2008). For us, confi rmation and full characterization of specifi c isolates may help to reveal the putative probiotics that exhibit desired properties and this would be an interesting fi nding in traditionally fermented home-made koumiss.…”

Biochemical and molecular identification of lactic acid bacteria isolated from camel milk in Tunisia

“…Because it is so conserved, in somecases the 16S rDNA gene is not sufficient for differentiating between species of LAB, especially Enterococcus spp. (Aymerich et al, 2003;Mohania et al, 2008). Considering the difficulties in differentiating between some LAB species with 16S rDNA sequencing and phenotypic tests, the application of specific molecular techniques such as species-specific PCR is necessary.…”