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Characterization of enterococci isolated from homemade Bulgarian cheeses and katuk

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Abstract

A collection of 107 lactic acid bacteria (LAB) isolates was obtained from traditional Bulgarian dairy products—homemade cheeses and katuk samples, produced from heat-treated cow, goat, ewe and buffalo milk without the addition of any bacterial starter culture. The samples were collected from mountain region of Rhodope (south part of Bulgaria), Tracian valley and mountain region of Stara Planina (west part of Bulgaria). These LAB produced bacteriocin-like inhibitory substances (BLIS) and proteinases. Preliminary strain determination was performed according to their fermentation ability using API 50CHL and API 20 Strep. Most of the characterized strains (58) belong to genus Enterococcus; 21, 20 and 11 strains were identified as Lactobacillus sp., Streptococcus sp. and Lactococcus sp., respectively. Isolated enterococcal strains were characterized using phenotypic features as well as by DNA typing. The strains were identified as Enterococcus faecium (34), Enterococcus durans (22) and Enterococcus faecalis (2). The proteolytic activity varied from 0.094 to 0.455 mM/L Gly into the group of E. faecium and from 0.109 to 0.487 mM/L Gly into the group of E. durans strains, while both E. faecalis strains showed relatively high proteolytic activity. The samples obtained after 3 h of hydrolysis of β-casein by E. faecalis B1 strain were further used for mass spectrometry analysis, and 31 peptides were identified.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude for the support of this work in the frame of project 982164 “Study of antimicrobial and hypoallergenic products of lactic acid bacteria” to NATO Science for Peace program and RILA project 4/1001.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Biology, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Nikolay Kirilov, Stanimir Kambarev, Saso Stoyanovski & Iskra Ivanova

  2. UR 1268 INRA, BIA-FIP, rue de la Géraudière, B. P. 71627, 44316, Nantes Cedex 3, France

    Nikolay Kirilov, Michèle Dalgalarrondo, Thomas Haertlé & Jean-Marc Chobert

  3. Department of Genetics, Faculty of Biology, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Svetoslav Dimov & Stanimir Kambarev

  4. Department of Functional Biology, Schoumen University, Schoumen, Bulgaria

    Tseteslava Ignatova

  5. Department of Microbial Genetics, Institute of Microbiology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Svetla Danova

  6. Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Faculty of Biology, Plovdiv University “Paisii Hilendarski”, Plovdiv, Bulgaria

    Ilia Iliev

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  1. Nikolay Kirilov
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  2. Svetoslav Dimov
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  11. Iskra Ivanova
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Correspondence to Jean-Marc Chobert.

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Kirilov, N., Dimov, S., Dalgalarrondo, M. et al. Characterization of enterococci isolated from homemade Bulgarian cheeses and katuk. Eur Food Res Technol 233, 1029–1040 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00217-011-1600-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00217-011-1600-z

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