ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Food Microbiology
This article is part of the Research TopicProbiotic Potential: Lactic Acid Bacteria in Advancing Functional Foods and Health OutcomesView all 16 articles
Classification, quantification, and thermotolerance assessment of lactic acid bacteria in yogurt using bacterial melting curve analysis
Provisionally accepted
- Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China
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Here, for the first time, we put forward a bacterial melting curve analysis (BMCA) method to classify lactic acid bacteria (LAB) rapidly. This approach employs SYTO 9 and a thermoregulated fluorometer to simultaneously monitor LAB viability and double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) content. Ramping the temperature from physiological (37°C) to denaturing (98°C) levels allowed the concurrent recording of bacterial inactivation kinetics and dsDNA dissociation profiles, yielding distinct species-specific signatures. Validation using three reference strains demonstrated clear differentiation of LAB via multivariate dimensionality reduction of the melting curves. The method was successfully applied to classify and quantify LAB in yogurt without using antibodies. Furthermore, BMCA was utilized to assess the thermotolerance of LAB in different formulations, revealing enhanced thermal stability when the bacteria were encapsulated within calcium alginate gel particles.
Keywords: IDENTIFICATION, Lactic acid bacteria, Melting curve, Quantitative detection, SYTO 9
Received: 24 Nov 2025; Accepted: 30 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Liang, Wei, CHEN, Wang, He, Chen and Li. 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:
Shengbin He
Quanzhi Chen
Zhao Li
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