A food-borne pathogen Salmonella enterica is already showing resistance to antibiotics and new approaches are needed to combat this problem. An excellent alternative approach to the conventional antibiotic therapy is the probiotic therapy. Strains of the Bacillus genus are in use as probiotics, but the interactions between S. enterica probiotic strains in biofilms are poorly understood. Even less is known about how intraspecific bacterial interactions influence interactions with another bacterial species. B. subtilis has been recently recognized for its ability to discriminate between less and more related strains. In order to study how relatedness between B. subtilis strains affects the growth and spatial distribution of S. enterica, we used mixtures of highly related and less related B. subtilis strains and cocultured them with S. enterica. Each strain was labelled with an antibiotic resistance gene (AmpR, SpR or CmR) and a fluorescent marker (GFPmut3, mKate2 or CFP). We aimed to determine whether and how the growth and distribution of S. enterica was changing in co-culture with B. subtilis and how kin discrimination between strains of B. subtilis impacts S. enterica. In experiments with spent media of B. subtilis strain mixtures and their relatedness have not inhibited growth of S. enterica, on contrary, spent media contained components that promoted the growth of S. enterica in liquid and on solid media. On the other hand, co-cultivation with B. subtilis mixtures had a negative impact on S. enterica growth, with no correlation with the strain number or relatedness. In colonies on a solid medium, the mixtures of highly-related strains of B. subtilis seemed to be more effective in reducing number of S. enterica cells, however, the size of Salmonella's colony has not changed. We also found that the relatedness between B. subtilis strains had a significant impact on antibiotic resistance of S. enterica, which became more susceptible to tetracycline and cotrimoxazole and less susceptible to spectinomycin after incubation with highly-related B. subtilis strains.
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