To reduce high-salt waste from cucumber fermentations, low-salt fermentations are under development. These fermentations may require the use of starter cultures to ensure normal fermentations. Because potential phage infection can cause starter culture failure, it is important to understand phage ecology in the fermentations. This study investigated the phage ecology in a commercial cucumber fe...

For decades, babies were thought to be born germ-free, but recent evidences suggest that they are already exposed to various bacteria in utero. However, the data on population levels of such pioneer gut bacteria, particularly in context to birth mode, is sparse. We herein aimed to quantify such bacteria from the meconium of 151 healthy term Japanese infants born vaginally or by C-section. Neona...

The ability of four Lactobacillus strains - Lactobacillus brevis LBRZ7 (isolated from fermented cabbage), Lactobacillus plantarum LBRZ12 (isolated from fermented cabbage), Lactobacillus fermentum LBRH9 (of human origin) and Lactobacillus casei ssp. rhamnosus LBRC11 (isolated from home-made cheese) - to grow in flour/water environment and to accumulate high concentrations of viable cells was exa...

The concentrations of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in 22 Italian cheese varieties that differ in several technological traits markedly varied from 0.26 to 391 mg kg(-1). Presumptive lactic acid bacteria were isolated from each cheese variety (total of 440 isolates) and screened for the capacity to synthesize GABA. Only 61 isolates showed this activity and were identified by partial sequencing...

One of the most commonly observed surface structures on the prokaryotic cell envelopes is monomolecular crystalline array of proteinaceous subunits termed Surface Layers or S-layers. Due their self assembly ability and the highly ordered, regular structure down to the nanometer scale, S-layers were demonstrated to possess a great potential for nanobiotechnological applications. Some probiotic b...

Biofilms on the surface of food industry equipment are reservoirs of potentially food-contaminating bacteria-both spoilage and pathogenic. However, the capacity of biogenic amine (BA)-producers to form biofilms has remained largely unexamined. BAs are low molecular weight, biologically active compounds that in food can reach concentrations high enough to be a toxicological hazard. Fermented foo...