Seeds of the Wild Progenitor of Maize Possess Bacteria That Antagonize Foodborne Pathogens
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Endophytes are microorganisms that inhabit plant tissues without causing disease. Some endophytes help their hosts to combat pathogens. Here we explored the hypothesis that the plant-derived foods consumed by humans and other animals host endophytes that also antagonize foodborne pathogens or food-rotting agents. Our laboratory previously cultured a library of bacterial endophytes from different members of the maize/corn family (Zea) including wild relatives. Here, 190 of these endophytes were screened for their ability to antagonize four foodborne pathogens (Escherichia coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Clostridium perfringens, and Salmonella enterica Newport) and a food spoiling agent (Pseudomonas fluorescens) using dual culture assays. Two Paenibacillus polymyxa endophytes (strains 3C6 and 3G11) were found to inhibit the growth of all five deleterious strains on agar. Using conserved polymerase chain reaction primers and sequencing, both beneficial endophytes were found to encode polymyxin genes, suggesting a potential antibacterial mechanism of action. Polymyxin production by both strains was confirmed using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Strains 3C6 and 3G11 originated, respectively, from the seeds of the wild Central American maize species Zea diploperennis, and the wild ancestor of modern maize, Zea mays ssp parviglumis (Parviglumis). As the latter is the direct ancestor of modern maize, we discuss the role its endophyte(s) may have played in promoting crop domestication by suppressing foodborne pathogens and/or food-spoilage agents.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".