Transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses reveal antibacterial mechanism of astringent persimmon tannin against Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolated from pork

Persimmon tannin (PT) exhibits antibacterial activity against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolated from retail pork. The involved molecular mechanisms were investigated for the first time using transcriptome and metabolome in this study. Results showed that subinhibitory concentration of PT (0.5 mg/ml) induced significant changes in MRSA at both transcriptional and metabolic levels, as 370 genes and 19 metabolites were differentially expressed. Bioinformatic analysis revealed that the varying genes and metabolites were mainly involved in pathways of membrane transport, amino acids, carbohydrate, and energy metabolism. The highlighted changes were those related to osmotic regulation, intracellular pH regulation, amino acid synthesis and metabolism, glycolysis, TCA cycle and iron metabolism, suggesting the multifaceted effects including cell membrane damage, amino acids limitation, energy metabolism disorder and iron deprivation induced by PT. The results provided insight into the anti-MRSA mechanism of PT, which is useful for PT's development and application in food safety.