Potential postbiotic activities of extracellular products of probiotic bacteria from gilthead seabream gastrointestinal tract

Abstract

Probiotics have been established as a potential tool for improving gut health and environmental quality in aquaculture. However, recent evidence suggests that bacterial viability is not necessary to attain the beneficial-promoting effects. In this way, postbiotics have emerged providing a potential opportunity in the field of functional foods. They are soluble factors resulting from the metabolic activity of a probiotic or any released molecule, including short-chain fatty acids, enzymes, extracellular products, etc. that can have interesting properties inducing biological responses on health similar to probiotics while avoiding the administration of live microorganisms. Interestingly, its production can be affected by different factors such as the components of the culture media among others. Information on this type of postbiotic activities is very scarce, especially in the case of aquaculture, so the evaluation of the nutraceutical use of postbiotics to improve health management in fish and other cultivated aquatic organisms is an emerging area of research in aquaculture. In a previous work, we characterized four potential probiotics that were isolated from the gastrointestinal tract of Sparus aurata specimens fed with a diet containing a blend of microalgae. This diet involves a selection pressure on the intestinal microbiota of the fish that will be used to achieve enrichment in bacteria with a set of extracellular enzymatic activities capable of metabolizing and mobilizing the components of the diet enriched with microalgae. Here, we investigate the postbiotic potential of the extracellular products (ECPs) obtained from the four candidate probiotics grown on different microalgae-supplemented medium, and evaluate its enzymatic and antibacterial activity, and its cytotoxicity against the SAF-1 cell line. Our objective is to select different ECPs with a variety of activities that help the digestive process of seabream, with the aim to be included in aquafeeds.