Toxic reactive oxygen species stresses for reconfiguring central carbon metabolic fluxes in foodborne bacteria: Sources, mechanisms and pathways

Abstract

The toxic reactive oxygen species (toxROS) is the reactive oxygen species (ROS) beyond the normal concentration of cells, which has inactivation and disinfection effects on foodborne bacteria. However, foodborne bacteria can adapt and survive by physicochemical regulation of antioxidant systems, especially through central carbon metabolism (CCM), which is a significant concern for food safety. It is thus necessary to study the antioxidant regulation mechanisms of CCM in foodborne bacteria under toxROS stresses. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to provide an update and comprehensive overview of the reconfiguration of CCM fluxes in foodborne bacteria that respond to different toxROS stresses. In this review, two key types of toxROS including exogenous toxROS (exo-toxROS) and endogenous toxROS (endo-toxROS) are introduced. Exo-toxROS are produced by disinfectants, such as H₂O₂ and HOCl, or during food non-thermal processing such as ultraviolet (UV/UVA), cold plasma (CP), ozone (O₃), electrolyzed water (EW), pulsed electric field (PEF), pulsed light (PL), and electron beam (EB) processing. Endo-toxROS are generated by bioreagents such as antibiotics (aminoglycosides, quinolones, and β-lactams). Three main pathways for CCM in foodborne bacteria under the toxROS stress are also highlighted, which are glycolysis (EMP), pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), and tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA). In addition, energy metabolisms throughout these pathways are discussed. Finally, challenges and future work in this area are suggested. It is hoped that this review should be beneficial in providing insights for future research on bacterial antioxidant CCM defence under both exo-toxROS stresses and endo-toxROS stresses.

Keywords:

• Foodborne bacteria
• the toxic ROS
• central carbon metabolic flux
• reconfiguration

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32272466) for its support. This research was also supported by the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2021A1515110396, 2021A1515010644), Guangzhou Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (202201010008), the Contemporary International Collaborative Research Centre of Guangdong Province on Food Innovative Processing and Intelligent Control (2019A050519001), the Science and Technology Plan Projects of Guangzhou City (202102100009) and the Common Technical Innovation Team of Guangdong Province on Preservation and Logistics of Agricultural Products (2022KJ145).

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Funding

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