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Comprehensive Analysis of the Physiological Characterization of Escherichia coli Nissle 1917

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Abstract

Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) is one of the probiotics that has drawn more attention from researchers in recent days as it extends many host beneficial effects. EcN is being used as a treatment regimen especially for gastrointestinal disorders for more than 100 years. Apart from its clinical applications in its original form, EcN is being genetically engineered to meet the therapeutic requirements which ultimately led to the gradual transformation of EcN from being a mere food supplement to a complex therapeutic agent. However, comprehensive analysis of physiological characterization of EcN is inadequate. In this study, we have systematically studied various physiological parameters and found that EcN grows very well at the normal as well as at stressful conditions such as temperature (30, 37 and 42 °C), nutritional (minimal and LB), pH (ranging from 3 to 7) and osmotic stress (0.4 M NaCl, 0.4 M KCl, 0.4 M Sucrose and salt conditions). However, EcN shows nearly onefold reduction in viability at extreme acidic conditions (pH 3 and 4). It produces biofilm and curlin very efficiently compared to the laboratory strain MG1655. Through genetic analysis we have also shown that EcN exhibits high level of transformation efficiency and greater ability to retain heterogenous plasmid. Very interestingly, we have found that EcN is highly resistant to P1 phage infection. Since, EcN is being exploited largely for its clinical and therapeutic applications, the results that we have reported here would add more value and further expand its scope in clinical and biotechnological research.

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Data Availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information files).

Abbreviations

EcN:

E. coli Nissle 1917

IBD:

Inflammatory Bowel Disease

LB media:

Luria Bertani media

PBS:

Phosphate Buffered Saline

CFU:

Colony Forming Units

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Prof. M. Hussain Munavar for his continuous support and concern. We thank Prof. Ramachandran Murugesan and Prof. Sripathi Kandula for their help and support. We thank Ardeypharm, Germany for providing EcN1917 strain, Dr. Harinarayanan, for providing pCA24N plasmid and Dr. Sutharsan for gifting pHerd30T-sfCherry plasmid. We thank the management of CHRI, CARE for providing the infrastructure facilities. We thank DBT, Govt of India for the extramural research funding. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the comments that have helped in improving the quality of this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the extramural research fund received from DBT, Government of India (BT/PR40731/COT/142/22/2021).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Chettinad Hospital and Research Institute, Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Kelambakkam, 603103, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

    S. Ramadevi, Ruby Shelin & Meenakshi Shanmugaraja

  2. Department of Biotechnology, Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, Sivakasi, 626005, Tamil Nadu, India

    Meenakshi Shanmugaraja

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SM analyzed the data, wrote/reviewed the manuscript and provided resources; SR and RS performed the experiments and wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Meenakshi Shanmugaraja.

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Ramadevi, S., Shelin, R. & Shanmugaraja, M. Comprehensive Analysis of the Physiological Characterization of Escherichia coli Nissle 1917. Curr Microbiol 80, 150 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00284-023-03253-9

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