Factors affecting production and effectiveness, performance improvement and mechanisms of action of bacteriocins as food preservative

Abstract

Modern society is increasingly attracted with safe, natural, and additive-free food products, that gives preference to bacteriocins produced by General Recognized as Safe bacteria as a food preservative. Bacteriocins have been reported to be effective in extending shelf life of diverse foods such as meats, dairy products, wine, juice, and fruits and vegetables, whereas commercialized bacteriocins remain only nisin, pediocin, and Micocin. It is important that commercialized preservatives undergo an easy-to-handle manufacturing while maintaining high efficacy. Limited application of bacteriocins is most often caused by the absence of legislatives for use, low production, high cost and complicated purification process, reduced efficiency in the complex food matrix and insufficiently defined mechanism of action. Accordingly, this review provides an overview of bacteriocins, in relation to production stimulation, general purification scheme, impact of food matrix on bacteriocin effectiveness, and collaborative technology to improve bacteriocin performances. It is worth to note that purification and performance improvement technology remain the two challenging tasks in promoting bacteriocins as a widely used bio-preservative. Furthermore, this review for the first time divides bacteriocin receptors into specific classes (class I, II, III) and nonspecific class, to provide a basis for an in-depth understanding of the mechanism of action.

Keywords:

• Action mechanism
• activity
• bacteriocin
• food matrix

Author contributions

Zhen Peng: Conceptualization, data curation, and writing; Tao Xiong: Resources and supervision; Tao Huang, Xiaoyan Xu, Pengrong Fan, Baoling Qiao, Mingyong Xie: Professional advice and writing instructions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 32160547), Vegetable Industry Technology System Post Expert Project of Jiangxi Province (Project No. JXARS-06), Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation of Guangdong Province (Project No.2021B1515120042), and Major Special Science and Technology Project of Yunnan Province (Project No. 202002AE320006).