In the wake of continual foodborne disease outbreaks in recent years, it is critical to focus on strategies that protect public health and reduce the incidence of foodborne pathogens and spoilage microorganisms. Currently, there are limitations associated with conventional microbial control methods, such as the use of chemical preservatives and heat treatments. For example, such conventional treatments adversely impact the sensorial properties of food, resulting in undesirable organoleptic characteristics. Moreover, the growing consumer advocacy for safe and healthy food products, and the resultant paradigm shift toward clean labels, have caused an increased interest in natural and effective antimicrobial alternatives. For instance, natural antimicrobial elements synthesized by lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are generally inhibitory to pathogens and significantly impede the action of food spoilage organisms. Bacteriocins and other LAB metabolites have been commercially exploited for their antimicrobial properties and used in many applications in the dairy industry to prevent the growth of undesirable microorganisms. In this review, we summarized the natural antimicrobial compounds produced by LAB, with a specific focus on the mechanisms of action and applications for microbial food spoilage prevention and disease control. In addition, we provide support in the review for our recommendation for the application of LAB as a potential alternative antimicrobial strategy for addressing the challenges posed by antibiotic resistance among pathogens.

The present study focused on probiotic characterization and safety evaluation of Enterococcus isolates from different artisanal dairy products. All the isolates exhibited inhibitory activity against several food spoilage bacteria and food-borne pathogens, including Shigella flexneri, Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes, Yersinia enterocolitica, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, and Bacillus subtilis. The PCR results indicated the presence of at least one enterocin structural gene in all the tested strains. The Enterococcus isolates were further evaluated regarding their safety properties and functional features. The isolates were susceptible to vancomycin, gentamycin, and chloramphenicol. The results of PCR amplification revealed that all the tested isolates harbored none of the tested virulence genes except E. faecalis (ES9), which showed the presence of esp gene. The Enterococcus isolates showed cholesterol lowering properties. The selected isolates showed a high tolerance to low pH, and toward bile salts. They also demonstrated hydrophobicity activity, auto-aggregation, and adhesion ability to the human intestinal Caco-2 cell line. These properties may contribute the bacteria colonizing the gut. This study revealed that the Enterococcus isolates, especially E. durans ES11, ES20 and ES32, might be excellent candidates for production of functional foods to promote health benefits.

Cholesterol plays a central role in maintaining the structural organization of the milk fat globule membrane (MFGM). Here, we used a β-cyclodextrin–mediated sterol exchange approach to remove cholesterol from bovine cream and replace it with β-sitosterol, enabling an assessment of sterol-dependent effects on lipid membrane architecture. Confocal Raman hyperspectral imaging combined with hierarchical clustering, K-means, and principal component analysis revealed that native cream exhibits clear segregation between the TAG core and a laterally-organized membrane enriched in phospholipids, sterols, and proteins. Cholesterol depletion disrupted this organization, increasing membrane heterogeneity and shifting spectral variance toward protein-associated features. β-sitosterol partially restored lipid-associated variance but did not fully re-establish the native cholesterol-driven structure, resulting in a remodeled interface with mixed sterol–protein signatures and increased membrane fluidity. Raman spectral ratiometric analysis of membrane-assigned pixels confirmed modest recovery of lipid packing, highlighting the need to isolate membrane spectra to resolve subtle compositional changes. These findings demonstrate that cholesterol governs lateral organization and protein–lipid coupling within the MFGM, and that phytosterol substitution induces structural adaptation rather than complete restoration. This novel study establishes spatially resolved Raman imaging combined with multivariate analytics as a robust platform for probing interfacial chemistry and sterol-dependent remodeling in complex dairy emulsions.