Sample collections and bacterial isolates
Eerqisi River is located in the Altay region of northern part of Xinjiang, China (45°00'~49°10' N, 85°31'~91°01' E), which is geographically classified as cold-temperate zone. There are more than 10 indigenous wild cold-water fishes in the lakes and rivers where the average annual temperature ranges from 5-8°C, and the water temperature is less than 20°C all the year round. Fish samples (sixteen kinds of healthy, adult cold-water fishes, their species names are shown in Table 2.) were carried out in the month of August of two consecutive years (2014 and 2015). Which were procured from a local cold-water fishes breeding bases of Altay, Xinjiang, and transported in ice-packed boxes to the Biotechnology Laboratory, Food College, Shihezi University. This study did not involve any protected or endangered species, hence no specific permissions and ethics were required to collect the fish samples. However, all animal studies were performed in accordance with ARRIVE guidelines, with the approval of the Ethics of Animal Experiments of Shihezi University Committee, Shi Hezi, China. The pathogenic bacterial strains Escherichia coli (EPEC) O127:K63 (CICC 10411), Escherichia coli (EHEC) O157:H7 (CICC 21530), Listeria monocytogenes (CGMCC 1.9136), Listeria innocua (CGMCC 1.2990), Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium (CICC 10420) and Salmonella enterica subsp. Enterica (CGMCC 1.10754) used in the study for antibacterial activity were purchased from China Industrial Microbial Species Conservation Management Center (Wuhan, China).
One gram of the intestinal samples of cold-water fishes were diluted by 10 times gradient in turn, and the bacterial suspensions of 10-2, 10-3 and 10-4 gradients were uniformly coated on MRS medium and cultured at 16℃ for 2-5 days under microaerophilic conditions. Single bacterial colonies on the surface of the plate were selected and separated by streaking, and the cells were cultured for 3 to 4 times until purification. Gram staining and contact enzyme experiments were carried out to screen suspected lactic acid bacteria. All the purified strains were centrifuged then suspended in fresh medium, and supplemented with 50% (w/v) sterile glycerol, and stored frozen in a -80°C freezer for further analysis.
Phenotypic characterization
Cell morphology of all isolates and their motility were determined using a phase contrast microscope (Olympus CX21, Japan). Overnight cultures of isolates grown on MRS agar were submitted to gram staining and tested for catalase production as described by Okada et al. [43]. All the isolates matched to the basic traits of the LAB group, non-spore forming, gram-positive, and catalase negative were considered for identification. Sugar fermentation patterns of partial LAB isolates were determined using the API 50 CHL (bioMérieux, France) medium for culturing lactobacilli. In the system analysis, the carbon source metabolism was transformed into a matrix containing only 1 and 0 two-valued variables, and cluster analysis was performed using NTSYS-pc 2.01 (Applied Biostatistics Inc., New York, USA) software, using a non-weighted arithmetic average linkage method. The optimum growth temperature of the Lactobacillus strains were determined by measuring the OD at 420 nm after incubation for 24 h at 4°C, 10°C, 16°C, 20°C, 25°C, 30°C and 37°C. The experiment was repeated three times and a blank control was performed.
Rep-PCR genomic fingerprinting
DNA from the Lactobacillus spp. was extracted according to the urea-SDS-NaOH method [45] with slight modifications.
Rep-PCR was performed according to the methods of Lee et al. [44]. The fingerprints were analyzed by single primer BOXA 1R and (GTG)5, and the PCR reaction conditions were shown in Table 1. PCR products were separated by electrophoresis on a 2.0% (w/v) agarose gels using 1×TAE buffer (2 mol/L Tris base, 1 mol/L acetic acid, 0.05 mol/L EDTA with pH 8.0) and run at 80 V for 3.5 h. The gels were photographed on a UV transilluminator (Power Pas Universal, BioRad, USA) and the resulting images were saved in TIFF format. The resulting Rep-PCR fingerprints were analyzed using the Gel Compar II 6.0 software (Applied Maths, Austin, TX, USA). Pearson coefficients were used for similarity analysis and UPGMA output was used for dendrogram.
16S rRNA amplification and sequencing
The 16S rRNA gene was amplified using gene universal primers 27 forward primer (FP) (5'-AGAGTTTGATCCTGGCTCAG-3') and 1492 reverse primer (RP) (5'-TACGGCTACCTTGTTACGACTT-3'). The amplification of the gene was performed in a 25 µL reaction mixture for PCR containing 3 µL of the DNA template (approximately 20 ng/µL), 2×Taq MasterMix 12.5 μL, 0.5 μL (0.4 μM/mL) of each primer, and with ddH2O supplemented to 25 μL. The PCR conditions consisted of 35 cycles (pre-denaturation at 95°C for 5 min; denaturation at 95°C for 1 min, annealing at 53°C for 1 min, and elongation step at 72°C for 1 min), and one additional cycle at 72°C for 7 min. The PCR was carried out in a thermocycler PCR System (TC-512, Techne, U.K.) and the 16S rRNA amplicons were analyzed by electrophoresis on 1.5% (w/v) agarose gels with 5 mL of Gel Stain (Invitrogen, Life technologies, USA), followed by 100 V for 60 min in 1×TAE buffer and visualized by UV light. Observed and photographed the bands under the gel imaging system, the PCR products were sent to Shanghai Shenggong Company for sequencing. The 16S rRNA gene sequences closer to the genetic relationship from the GenBank database was aligned using CLUSTAL X 1.83 software. The evolution distance was calculated using the neighbor-joining method. In the MEGA version7.0 [46], the evolution tree was constructed using the p-distances and the Kimura-2 parameter double-parameter method. The stability of the branching pattern of the evolution tree was bootstrap method, and the number of repetition was 1000.
Antibacterial assay
The Lactobacillus strains were added to the modified MRS liquid medium at 1% inoculation amount, cultured at 20°C for 24 h, centrifuged at 10, 000 r/min for 5 min, and then the supernatant was filtered through a 0.22 μm filter (Millipore Ltd., Watford, UK) to obtain cell-free supernatants (CFS). Escherichia coli EPEC O 127:K63 (CICC 10411), Escherichia coli EHEC O157:H7 (CICC 21530), Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium (CICC 10420), Salmonella enterica subsp. Enterica (CGMCC 1.10754), Listeria monocytogenes (CGMCC 1.9136), Listeria innocua (CGMCC 1.2990) were used as indicator bacteria for bacteriostatic experiments. The antimicrobial activities of CFS produced from isolated bacteria were tested using the Oxford cup method [47]. These indicator bacteria were inoculated in LB, PYG and TSA medium (Hai Bo Biotechnology, Qingdao, China), respectively. After 18 hours of incubation at 37°C, the suspension with 100 mL (concentration of about 106-107 cfu/mL) was evenly coated on the surface of severally medium with sterile cotton swabs. The oxford cup was gently pressed on the coated medium, and added 200 μL of cell-free fermentation supernatant to the cup, using non-bacterial MRS medium as blank control, then pre-diffused 5 h at 4°C, and incubated at 37°C for 18 hours to determine the diameter of the inhibition zone. Three parallel experiments were conducted in each experiment to determine the bacteriostasis ability.
The pH and bile tolerance
Acid resistance of LAB strains were assayed using the method of Owusu-Kwarteng et al. [48] with modification. The strains were grown overnight (24 h) on MRS broth at 24°C, the cultured cell fluid was centrifuged at 5,000×g for 5 min at 4°C and washed with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) solution (0.1 M, pH 7.2) in twice. The cell pellet was re-suspended in PBS solution with different pH, i.e., 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 incubate for 4 hours. Then absorbed 100 µL of these dilutions were applied to MRS agar plates at 24°C for 24 h, and the number of colonies on the plate was used to determine the survival rate (the viable cell count was recorded and compared with initial viable cell count). For bile salt tolerance, survival rates for these strains were estimated at different bile salt concentrations (0.3, 0.5, 1, and 2%). The experiment was carried out using the same experimental method as the acid resistance test and compared with the control. In this case, the experiment was conducted in triplicates and averaged.
Haemolytic activity
Haemolytic activity was determined by streaking the Lactobacillus strains on the blood agar plate, containing 5% sheep and incubated for 48 h at 37°C. The haemolytic reactions were examined for signs of β-haemolysis (clear halo around colonies), α-haemolysis (green halo around colonies) or γ-haemolysis (no halo around colonies).
Susceptibility to antibiotics
The Lactobacillus strains with antibacterial activity were tested for resistance to antibiotics by the disc diffusion method, according to Fortina et al. [49, 50]. The prepared 1×108 cfu/g suspension was picked up with a sterile cotton swab and evenly spread on the surface of the MRS medium, and then the drug-responsive papers were tightly fixed on the surface of the medium with sterile tweezers. Microaerophilic culture was performed at 20°C for 18-24 hours to determine the diameter of the inhibition zone with a digital calliper (Absolute Digimatic Caliper, Mitutoyo, USA). Antibiotic discs (Oxoid, England) were used to determine the susceptibility of the strains to 15 antibiotics: minocyline (30 μg/disc), chloramphenicol (30 μg/disc), amikacin (30 μg/disc), ampicillin (10 μg/disc), gentamicin (120 μg/disc), teicoplanin (30 μg/disc), cefotaxime (30 μg/disc), cefoxitin (30 μg/disc), oxacillin (1 μg/disc), levofloxacin (5 μg/disc), aztreonam (30 μg/disc), penicillin (10 μg/disc), rifampicin (5 μg/disc), tetracycline (30 μg/disc), and vancomycin (30 μg/disc), analyses were done in duplicate. Each isolate was classified as resistant (R), sensitive (S) and/or intermediate (I) according to the inhibition zone diameters in agreement with the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute tables [51].
Statistical Analyses
Values from each trial were determined from means of duplicate data, the consequence of sugar fermentation metabolism of Lactobacillus spp. were clustered by NTSYS-pc 2.01 software and the Rep-PCR fingerprints of the strains were analyzed using Gel Compar II 6.0 software. The collected data from tolerance to pH and bile salts were performed with Microsoft Excel 2010. Meanwhile the average and standard deviation of the results of bacterial inhibition were calculated to represent the inhibition zone diameter for each Lactobacillus strain.