Meat products contain valuable nutrients that are important for human health and development but are also highly susceptible to colonization by microorganisms. This can lead to spoilage and serious foodborne illnesses. Natural antimicrobial peptides, produced by many organisms as part of their innate immune system to fight microbial infections, have great potential as food preservatives. In this study, we explored the effect of ternary antimicrobial random peptide mixtures (RPMs) on food spoilage bacteria in minced turkey meat. Amendment of RPMs to meat led to significant reductions in bacterial abundance in experimental tests, and RPMs worked synergistically with nitrite to reduce bacterial loads. Using high-throughput 16 S ribosomal RNA gene amplicon sequencing, we characterized the effect of RPMs and nitrite on meat microbial community structure before and during incubation under refrigerated conditions. Our findings reveal strong antimicrobial activity for RPMs against spoilage bacteria in meat, including Listeria monocytogenes and Pseudomonas putida. These results demonstrate the potential of RPMs as a safer preservative for reducing spoilage in meat and other food products.

肉制品含有宝贵的营养素，这些营养素对人类健康和发展至关重要，但也极易被微生物定植。这可能会导致腐败和严重的食源性疾病。由许多生物体产生的天然抗微生物肽是其抵抗微生物感染的先天免疫系统的一部分，具有作为食品防腐剂的巨大潜力。在这项研究中，我们探讨了三元抗微生物随机肽混合物（RPM）对切碎的火鸡肉中食物腐败细菌的影响。对肉类RPM的修正导致实验测试中细菌丰度的显着降低，并且RPM与亚硝酸盐协同工作以减少细菌含量。使用高通量16 S核糖体RNA基因扩增子测序，我们表征了冷藏条件下孵育之前和期间，RPM和亚硝酸盐对肉类微生物群落结构的影响。我们的发现表明，RPM对肉类中的腐败细菌具有很强的抗菌活性，包括单核细胞增生李斯特菌和恶臭假单胞菌。这些结果证明了RPM作为减少肉类和其他食品腐败变质的更安全防腐剂的潜力。