Strain-Specific Metabolomic Diversity of Lactiplantibacillus Plantarum Under Aerobic and Anaerobic Conditions

Abstract

We aimed to investigate the chemotaxonomic diversity of 20 Lactiplantibacillus plantarum strains using non-targeted metabolite profiling under different culture conditions. Multivariate and metabolic pathway analyses based on GC-MS and LC-MS/MS datasets showed that amino acid metabolism, especially 2-hydroxy acids, was enriched under aerobic conditions (AE), whereas fatty acid & sugar metabolism was enriched under anaerobic conditions (AN). Based on the metabolite profiles, L. plantarum strains were clustered into three main groups (A, B, and C). Overall, 79 and 83 significantly discriminant metabolites were characterized as chemical markers of AE and AN growth condition, respectively. Notably, alcohols were more abundant in group A whereas amino acids, peptides, purines, and pyrimidines were significantly higher in group C. 2-hydroxy acid and oxylipins biosynthesized through amino acid and fatty acid metabolism, respectively, were more abundant in groups A and B. Further, we observed a strong correlation between the chemical diversity of L. plantarum groups and their antioxidant activity from metabolite extracts. We propose a non-targeted metabolomic workflow to comprehensively characterize the chemodiversity of L. plantarum strain under different culture condition, which may help reveal specific biomarkers of individual strains depending on the culture conditions.

Keywords: Lactiplantibacillus plantarum, nontargeted metabolomics, aerobic conditions, anaerobic conditions, Chemotaxonomy.