Revealing the correlation between the bacterial communities and physicochemical properties of ZaoPoCu, a traditional fermented food from Hainan Island

ABSTRACT

The bacterial communities of Zaopocu (ZPC), a tropical specialty fermented food in Hainan Island, were characterized in this study using high-throughput sequencing. Firmicutes and Proteobacteria were the two dominant phyla. The primary genus in ZPC_A was Weissella, while ZPC_B and ZPC_C had Lactobacillus as the dominant genus. The biomarker lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in ZPC_A were Lactobacillus brevis, Weissella confusa, and Leuconostoc citreum, whereas Lactobacillus amylolyticus and Lactobacillus helveticus were significantly higher in ZPC_B. In contrast, Lactobacillus pontis and Lactobacillus fermentum were the core LAB in ZPC_C. ZPC_A has the highest value of titratable acid (TA), amino acid, and lactic acid. TA had the most powerful influence on the structure of the bacterial communities, whereas salinity had a negligible effect. It is worth noting that ZPC may also faces food safety issue because opportunistic pathogenic bacteria like Stenotrophomonas and genes closely associated with Staphylococcus aureus infection were highly detected.

KEYWORDS:

• ZaoPoCu
• high-throughput sequencing
• bacterial communities
• lactic acid bacteria

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets analyzed for High-throughput sequencing during the current study are available on a online platform (http://www.omicsmart.com), Details of access can be obtained from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the [Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation #1] under Grant [322QN308]; [The College Students’ innovation and entrepreneurship training program of Hainan medical university #2] under Grant [number X202111810082].