Antimicrobial susceptibility of Lactobacillus species isolated from commercial ethanol plants

Bacterial contamination of commercial fermentation cultures is a common and costly problem to the fuel ethanol industry. Antimicrobials such as virginiamycin (VIR) and penicillin (PEN) are frequently used to control contamination but there are little data available on the susceptibility of bacterial contaminants to these agents. A survey of bacterial contaminants from a wet-mill ethanol plant with no history of using antibiotics and a dry-grind facility that periodically doses with VIR found that the majority of contaminants were species of Lactobacillus. Thirty-seven isolates of Lactobacillus species from the wet-mill and 42 isolates from the dry-grind facility were tested for antimicrobial susceptibility using broth dilution and agar dilution methods. In general, the Lactobacillus isolates from the dry-grind plant had higher minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) for the tested agents than the isolates from the wet-mill facility. The MIC90 for VIR was 4 mu g/ml for the dry-grind isolates versus 0.25 mu g/ml for the wet-mill isolates; and for PEN, the MIC90's were > 8 and 2 mu g/ml for the dry-grind and wet-mill isolates, respectively. Sixteen Lactobacillus isolates from the dry-grind plant but none from the wet-mill possessed vatE, a gene that encodes a streptogramin acetyltransferase associated with resistance to virginiamycin. Despite decreased susceptibility to virginiamycin, most dry-grind isolates had MICs lower than the maximal recommended application rate of 6 ppm.