Can electrophoretic types of Listeria monocytogenes induce different sensitivity to lactic acid bacteria bacteriocins?

The aim of this study was to find if electrophoretic types (ETs) of Listeria monocytogenes, typed by multilocus enzyme electrophoresis (MEE), can induce different sensitivity to lactic acid bacteria bacteriocins. Bacteriocins are extracellular peptides or protein molecules, produced by lactic acid bacteria, which not only have bactericidal or bacteriostatic effects, on usually closely related bacterial strains, but also they may have destructive effects on some not so closely related Gram positive bacteria, for example Listeria monocytogenes. Listeria monocytogenes is commonly found in the intestines of humans and animals, in milk, soil, leafy vegetables and in food processing environments. These bacteria have been isolated in a variety of foods, including raw and cooked poultry, meat, seafood, salads and sandwiches. Many techniques for typing of Listeria monocytogenes in foodstuffs, have been developed for the purpose of identification of the origin of infection for epidemiological and epizootological studies. Among the 98 examined isolates of Listeria monocytogenes (50 clinical/human and 48 from food of animal origin) 32 electrophoretic types have been detected. Bacteriocins, which we have used in the study, originated from the following lacic acid bacteria: Lactobacillus sake 148, Lactococcus UW, Lactobacillus sake 706, Pediococcus 347 and Lactobacillus sake 265. In this study, on the basis of a dendogram, our results indicate that a reliable relationship between genetic distance of Listeria monocytogenes electrophoretic types and their sensitivity to lactic acid bacteria bacteriocins cannot been found. MEE may, however, be of future benefit in establishing links beween isolates from human disease cases and thus be useful in establishing the epidemiology of not only sporadic cases, but of outbreaks of listeriosis, as well.