Biocontrol Studies of Lactobacillus Isolates against Fungal Pathogens and Its in silico Studies of Sequences of P-Transporter Genes

Lactobacillus plantarum is a heterofermentative micro aerophilic gram positive organism with rod shape morphology, occurring singly or in short chains. Lactobacillus bacteria are found to be effective biocontrol agents against many food borne fungal and bacterial pathogens. The present study was conducted to study the biocontrol activity of L. plantarum against fungal pathogens like Rhizoctonia solani and Fusarium graminearum. The inhibition was recorded by taking the fresh weight and dry weight of the fungal cultures grown singly and in association with L. plantarum, and in all the cases, the mixed cultures had a lower fungal growth compared with only fungal cultures. In silico approach was undertaken to studies depict the importance of Lactobacillus as a potent biocontrol agent and also phosphate transporter protein from Lactobacillus. Computational studies on phosphate transporters of several Lactobacillus sp. revealed various conservation sites including two motifs within the signature tag of major facilitator super family. Phylogenetic tree analysis shows that the phosphate transporters from various Lactobacillus sp. are closely related with each other. All these studies depict the importance of Lactobacillus as a potent biocontrol agent and also revealed the comparative analysis of the phosphate transporter gene from various strain of these bacteria.