Project description:Many food fermentations are carried out by mixed cultures of lactic acid bacteria. Interactions between strains are of key importance for the performance of these fermentations. Yoghurt fermentation by Streptoccus thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus (L.bulgaricus) is one of the best-described mixed culture fermentations. These species stimulate each other’s growth by the exchange of metabolites such as folic acid and carbon dioxide. Recently, post-genomic studies have been applied to reveal the global physiological response to mixed culture growth in S. thermophilus, but an in-depth molecular analysis of mixed culture growth of both strains remains to be established. Here we report the application of mixed culture transcriptome profiling and a systematic analysis of candidate interaction compounds on growth, which allowed the unraveling of the molecular responses associated with co-culture growth in batch of S. thermophilus CNRZ1066 and L. bulgaricus ATCC BAA-365 in milk.
