Weissella cibaria 110, isolated from the Thai fermented fish product plaa-som, was found to produce a bacteriocin active against some gram-positive bacteria. Bacteriocin activity was not eliminated by exposure to high temperatures or catalase but was destroyed by exposure to the proteolytic enzymes proteinase K and trypsin. The bacteriocin from W. cibaria 110 was purified, and sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis showed that the purified bacteriocin contained one protein band that was approximately 2.5 kDa in size. Mass spectrometry analysis showed the mass of the peptide to be approximately 3,487.8 Da. N-terminal amino acid sequence analysis was performed, and 27 amino acids were identified. Because it has no similarity to other known bacteriocins, this bacteriocin was defined as a new bacteriocin and termed weissellicin 110.Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) have long played important roles in food technology. The LAB include a wide variety of cell types with various physiological and biochemical characteristics. The isolation of LAB from milk products, fermented foods, and plants has frequently been reported. The phylogeny of the bacteria classified currently in the genus Weissella was clarified in 1990 (16), and the taxonomy of Weissella species was further assessed in 1993 (5). Weissella species have been isolated from a variety of sources, and some of them play important roles in fermentation (1). Weissella cibaria was first described by Björkroth et al.(1) and later found in various kinds of fermented foods (6,19).Bacteriocins are peptides produced by bacteria that kill or inhibit the growth of closely related bacteria. Bacteriocins produced by LAB have attracted special interest as potential safe, alternative food preservatives (4,8,15). Many bacteriocins associated with Lactobacillus, Enterococcus, and Leuconostoc species have been described previously (4). However, bacteriocins from Weissella species remain rare, and to our knowledge, no bacteriocins from W. cibaria (1, 9) have been reported previously.W. cibaria 110 (AB261010/DDBJ; DNA Data Bank of Japan [http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/]) isolated from plaa-som (17), a fermented fish product from Thailand, was found to produce a bacteriocin active against some gram-positive bacteria. The present paper describes the purification and analysis of this bacteriocin and discusses its similarities to other known peptides. This is the first study to clarify the characteristics of a W. cibaria bacteriocin.
MATERIALS AND METHODSW. cibaria 110. Ten strains of W. cibaria were isolated from plaa-som samples collected from Bangkok, Thailand, and their activities against the indicator strain Lactobacillus sakei JCM 1157 T were determined. Only strain 110 showed activity; this strain was identified using the API 50CHL kit, and the identification was confirmed using 16S rRNA sequence analysis. W. cibaria 110 was therefore used as the bacteriocin-producing strain in this study. Inhibitory activity was determined using the agar well diffusion assay described by ...