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Lactobacillus acidophilus is a Gram-positive lactic acid bacterium that has had widespread historical use in the dairy industry and more recently as a probiotic. Although L. acidophilus has been designated as safe for human consumption, increasing commercial regulation and clinical demands for probiotic validation has resulted in a need to understand its genetic diversity. By drawing on large, well-characterised collections of lactic acid bacteria, we examined L. acidophilus isolates spanning 92 years and including multiple strains in current commercial use. Analysis of the whole genome sequence data set (34 isolate genomes) demonstrated L. acidophilus was a low diversity, monophyletic species with commercial isolates essentially identical at the sequence level. Our results indicate that commercial use has domesticated L. acidophilus with genetically stable, invariant strains being consumed globally by the human population.

Original publication

DOI

10.1038/srep07202

Type

Journal article

Journal

Sci Rep

Publication Date

26/11/2014

Volume

4

Keywords

Base Sequence, Chromosome Mapping, Dairy Products, Food Microbiology, Genome, Bacterial, Genomic Instability, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Molecular Sequence Data, Probiotics