The viable but non-culturable (VBNC) status of Shewanella putrefaciens (S. putrefaciens) with thermosonication (TS) treatment

Although thermosonication (TS) treatment has been widely used in food sterilization, the viable but non-culturable (VBNC) of bacteria with TS treatment has still concerned potential food safety and public health. The molecular mechanism of VBNC status of bacteria with TS treatment is not clearly known. Therefore, in this study, we used Shewanella putrefaciens, which was a common putrefactive bacteria in aquatic products, to study the VBNC state of bacteria with TS treatment. Firstly, our results revealed that S. putrefaciens still could enter the VBNC state after TS treatments: 50 kHz, 300 W, 30 min ultrasonic treatment and 70 °C heating; Subsequently, we found the VBNC state of S. putrefaciens can resist the damage of TS treatment, such as cell wall break, DNA degradation, etc; Finally, four-dimensional data-independent acquisition-based proteomics showed that under VBNC state, S. putrefaciens upregulated functional proteins to resist TS treatment, such as: ribosomal proteins to accelerate the synthesis of stress proteins to counteract TS treatments, ornithine decarboxylase SpeF and MraY to repair TS treatment-induced damage, etc. Meanwhile, S. putrefaciens downregulates metabolic and transport functional proteins such as dehydrogenase to reduce the metabolism. Importantly, among those proteins, the ribosomal transcriptional regulatory protein family, such as rpsB, etc, may be the key proteins for S. putrefaciens entering VBNC state. This finding can provide some new strategies for preventing VBNC status of bacteria with TS treatment, such as: inhibition of key proteins, etc.