Staphylococcus carnosus: from starter culture to protein engineering platform

Abstract

Since the 1950s, Staphylococcus carnosus is used as a starter culture for sausage fermentation where it contributes to food safety, flavor, and a controlled fermentation process. The long experience with S. carnosus has shown that it is a harmless and “food grade” species. This was confirmed by the genome sequence of S. carnosus TM300 that lacks genes involved in pathogenicity. Since the development of a cloning system in TM300, numerous genes have been cloned, expressed, and characterized and in particular, virulence genes that could be functionally validated in this non-pathogenic strain. A secretion system was developed for production and secretion of industrially important proteins and later modified to also enable display of heterologous proteins on the surface. The display system has been employed for various purposes, such as development of live bacterial delivery vehicles as well as microbial biocatalysts or bioadsorbents for potential environmental or biosensor applications. Recently, this surface display system has been utilized for display of peptide and protein libraries for profiling of protease substrates and for generation of various affinity proteins, e.g., Affibody molecules and scFv antibodies. In addition, by display of fragmented antigen-encoding genes, the surface expression system has been successfully used for epitope mapping of antibodies. Reviews on specific applications of S. carnosus have been published earlier, but here we provide a more extensive overview, covering a broad range of areas from food fermentation to sophisticated methods for protein-based drug discovery, which are all based on S. carnosus.

Prevalence of Staphylococcus Species Colonization in Healthy and Sick Cats

“…Among staphylococci isolated in this study, only S. carnosus was not previously reported in pets [8]. This microorganism is used as a starter culture in food fermentation and widely known as a harmless species [24] and may be dismissed as an insignificant contaminant when isolated via bacterial culture. The Staphylococcus which deserves more attention in pet animals is S. lugdunensis which has been assumed to be nonpathogenic to companion animals and have been often excluded as the potential cause of infection [25].…”

Food-derived coagulase-negative Staphylococcus as starter cultures for fermented foods

“…Staphylococcus carnosus has been used as a starter culture for sausage fermentation since the 1950s (Lofblom et al, 2017 ). This long usage history has shown it to be a benign food-grade species, with complete genome sequencing of S. carnosus TM300 revealing that it lacks genes required for pathogenicity (Rosenstein et al, 2009 ).…”

Strategies to Improve Meat Products’ Quality

“…The first method consists of the direct addition of plant extracts into the meat mixture or brine, together with a starter culture of nitrate-reducing microorganisms (Staphylococcus carnosus, Staphylococcus xylosus) used for conversion to nitrite. This procedure is widely applied, especially for obtaining dry-cured meat products, whose long maturing periods are favorable for nitrate from vegetable extracts to be converted [134,153,154]. The second method involves the addition of pre-fermented or cultured vegetable juice or powder, with measurable nitrite content, after conversion of nitrate during a controlled fermentation process.…”