Approach for Unveiling the Glycoside Hydrolase Activities in Through a Systematic and Integrative Large-Scale Analysis.

This work presents a novel approach to the prediction and characterization of the glycolytic capacities of the beneficial intestinal bacterium . Available genomes were explored taking the glycolytic capacities of SL3/3 and L2-6 as reference. The comparison of the generated glycolytic profiles offered insights into the particular capabilities of SL3/3 and L2-6 as well as the potential of the rest of strains. Glycoside hydrolases were mostly detected in the pathways responsible for the starch and sucrose metabolism and the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, but this analysis also identified some other potentially interesting, but still uncharacterized activities, such as several hexosyltransferases and some hydrolases. Gene neighborhood maps offered additional understanding of the genes coding for relevant glycoside hydrolases. Although information about the carbohydrate preferences of is scarce, the metabolic predictions were consistent with previous knowledge about the impact of fermentable sugars on the growth promotion and metabolism of . So, while the predictions still need to be validated using culturing methods, the approach holds the potential to be reproduced and scaled to accommodate the analysis of other strains (or even families and genus) as well as other metabolic activities. This will allow the exploration of novel methodologies to design or obtain targeted probiotics for and other strains of interest.