EFSA Journal (May 2024)

Taxonomic identity of the Bacillus licheniformis strains used to produce food enzymes evaluated in published EFSA opinions

  • EFSA Panel on Food Contact Materials, Enzymes and Processing Aids (CEP),
  • José Manuel Barat Baviera,
  • Claudia Bolognesi,
  • Andrew Chesson,
  • Pier Sandro Cocconcelli,
  • Riccardo Crebelli,
  • David Michael Gott,
  • Konrad Grob,
  • Claude Lambré,
  • Evgenia Lampi,
  • Marcel Mengelers,
  • Alicja Mortensen,
  • Gilles Rivière,
  • Inger‐Lise Steffensen,
  • Christina Tlustos,
  • Henk Van Loveren,
  • Laurence Vernis,
  • Holger Zorn,
  • Lieve Herman,
  • Jaime Aguilera,
  • Ana Gomes,
  • Simone Lunardi,
  • Yi Liu,
  • Eleonora Marini,
  • Silvia Peluso

DOI
https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2024.8770
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 22, no. 5
pp. n/a – n/a

Abstract

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Abstract Bacillus paralicheniformis, a species known to produce the antimicrobial bacitracin, could be misidentified as Bacillus licheniformis, depending on the identification method used. For this reason, the European Commission requested EFSA to review the taxonomic identification of formerly assessed B. licheniformis production strains. Following this request, EFSA retrieved the raw data from 27 technical dossiers submitted and found that the taxonomic identification was established by 16S rRNA gene analyses for 15 strains and by whole genome sequence analysis for 12 strains. As a conclusion, only these 12 strains could be unambiguously identified as B. licheniformis.

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