MOLECULAR GENETIC STUDIES ON BACTERIAL FOLATE PRODUCTION AS FOOD ADDITIVES

Abstract

Folate deficiency is considered to be one of the main nutritional problems in the globe, which causes neural tube defects in fetus of pregnant women, and in general may cause cancer, alzheimer, and many other diseases. It is well known that probiotics and the microbiota of the gut are considered to be one of the main sources of folate, so isolation and selection of superior folate producers bacteria are highly required to be used in the industrial field as food supplements or in dairy products manufacturing. The need to understand the mechanism of folate production and the relation between occurrence of genes and folate production is still missing in the literature and thus more highlights need to be spotted in this area. In this work, probiotic bacteria found in yoghurt were screened for their ability to produce folate, and two producer strains were identified, Streptococcus thermophilus and Enterococcus faecium. The average folate production of the three isolated strains of Streptococcus thermophilus was found to be 19 fold superior over the best folate producer strain of Enterococcus faecium.