ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Food Microbiology
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Weissella and Periweissella genera: Taxonomy, Detection, Safety and Their Application in Food and HealthView all 4 articles
Biodiversity of the antimicrobial potential of Weissella paramesenteroides strains isolated from dairy cattle
Provisionally accepted
- 1Münster University of Applied Sciences, Münster, Germany
- 2Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat Bonn, Bonn, Germany
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Weissella species are lactic acid bacteria with a high potential for the fermentation of food items. They ferment fruits, vegetables, fish, and meat to deliver aromatic ingredients, produce antibacterial and antifungal compounds, and exert probiotic properties. Despite these attractive attributions they are still poorly studied. We have isolated 40 strains of Weissella paramesenteroides from one biotope, the udder of milk cattle, to examine genomic plasticity, antibacterial efficacy, and organic acid and hydrogen peroxide formation. Each isolate was identified by DNA sequence comparisons of the 16S rRNA-encoding gene. Patterns of genomic DNA fragments from random amplification of polymorphic DNA showed that 38 isolates differed by more than 5%, thus representing subspecies. Nine isolates were selected for further characterization. They could inhibit all eight used food-borne pathogens and surrogates. While Salmonella enterica and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were strongly inhibited, it was less but still significant for Listeria monocytogenes. However, the inhibition profiles were quite different. Acid production was assessed for each isolate in the presence of indicator strains exhibiting quite different acidification patterns as well. While the presence of S. enterica was associated with a drop-down in pH, no notable acidification was observed when Klebsiella pneumoniae and Bacillus subtilis were challenged. To confirm the observed differences, we analyzed the pan-genomes of ten genomes, retrieved from the NCBI database. Each genome comprises several hundreds of accessory genes and up to 6.5 per cent unique genes indicating a pronounced genome fluidity and additional strain-specific metabolic capacity. We suggest that the antibacterial efficacy of W. paramesenteroides is based on a multi-barrier system, whereby strains have developed different genetic qualities for the expression of an individual set of barriers.
Keywords: Antibacterial, Biodiversity, Food Safety, genome fluidity, genome plasticity, Lactic acid bacteria, Weissella
Received: 19 Nov 2025; Accepted: 05 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Fischer, Euler, Bertels, Mariani Corea and Titgemeyer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sebastian W. Fischer
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