Talk:Lactobacillus

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Raed-KSA2030.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:51, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Talia Ada Ang, Jenniferchen41.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:05, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

This article seriously needs to be improved
I really think this article has a lot of things that need to be fixed, including but not limited to the reliability of sources, the structure of this article, and lots of unreferenced content, as well as lots of important missing information. I would really appreciate if anyone could help raise this article to at least a C-class rating :)

Reliability of sources and Unreferenced content
This article really needs some more reliable sources to prove the information on it. Firstly, some claims such as the dental caries thing, does not have any sources that prove it. The source being used simply states a hypothesis, and is not sufficient to prove the effects of Lactobacillus on teeth. There are no sources about the metabolism of the bacteria as well.

I provided an additional citation for this and removed the 'dubious' tag. CameronNemo (talk) 20:00, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Structure of this article
I think that the structure of the article seriously needs to be fixed. It is lacking essential information. The sections list things that are very specific, and often are not the most important. Look at E. coli's page, which itself is being graded as a Good Article. Its structure is clear, the general topics are mentioned and the article then zooms in to the more specific topics. Lots of general information e.g. its biochemistry and its genetics, are missing from this article. Some sections such as taxonomy and metabolism need some serious fixing and expansion.

Fazbear7891 (talk) 02:46, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Isn't lactose a disaccharide? The article refers to it as a monosaccharide. Frankg 22:05, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Association of Lactobacillus with dental carries in lead is overstated
Recent literature in PUBMED shows that Lactobacilli in fact reduce the prevalence of the organisms that cause dental carries. [] See also references therein. The association is thus out of date. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.32.166.162 (talk) 23:26, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Furthermore, in the lower section of the article, one can see reference 10 was misused. [] The article cited IS NOT about dental carries, but about using probiotics to cure ulcers of the mouth. So in this case the therapy is a lactobacillus probiotic. I suggest that these horribly referenced sections be cleared up right away, since they have no basis in science. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.32.166.162 (talk) 23:34, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Starter vs. sponge
I removed a reference to "sponge" as a synonym for sourdough starter. In my limited baking experience, sponge refers to a preparation of commercial yeast, flour, and water prepared about a day in advance of the main part of the dough. A sourdough starter, on the other hand, consists of wild yeast and bacteria, and may be fed and maintained for years or even centuries. -- Coneslayer 21:59, 2005 August 5 (UTC)

I know of at least one major sourdough producer that refers to their starter as "the mother sponge." I would argue that either term is acceptable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.37.86.7 (talk) 08:12, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Cheese production
I guess lactobacilli are also important in cheese production but it is not mentioned. Should we insert it? --Araks 05:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Proportion in the Gut
I changed "large portion" to "small portion". More recent clinical microbiology places the class Clostridia as ~95% of the Firmicutes found in the human intestine (Eckburg, PB et al., Science, vol. 308, 2005). Lactobaccillus belongs to the Bacilli class which only represents ~0.2% of all Firmicutes found in the gut. Moreover, Firmicutes only represent ~70% of the gut flora which further lowers the percentage of Lactobacillus.

LGG
someone should add something about LGG to this page, since it is one of the most widely known and commercially employed Lactobacillus. There should also be a disambiguation page for LGG. Yoshm 09:32, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactobacillus_GGKnorrepoes 15:46, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

L. plantarum
'''Someone needs to fix this and source these articles better. This article says that the Lactobacillus family lacks an electron transport chain and likewise for L. plantarum. This is wrong as all organisms have an electron transport chain.'''

Taken from article to discussion by Knorrepoes 18:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree that the article needs some cleanup and better sourcing. However, the article (and the separate Lactobacillus plantarum wiki article) IS correct in stating that lactobacillus lacks a respiratory chain. Lactobacilli derive most of their energy from fermentation of sugars into lactic acid. They are unusual in that, despite not using oxygen in their normal metabolic processes, they still can tolerate and respirate it. --Elowan (talk) 13:39, 14 July 2010 (UTC)


 * This reference: R. J. W. Brooijmans, W. M. de Vos, and J. Hugenholtz. Lactobacillus plantarum WCFS1 Electron Transport Chains. Appl Environ Microbiol. 2009 June; 75(11): 3580–3585. Published online 2009 April 3. doi: 10.1128/AEM.00147-09.


 * says it probably has a simple respiratory chain and citochromes. The authors propose the bacteria has an aerobic electron transport chain that "is simple and nonredundant and consists of an NADH dehydrogenase (Ndh1), a menaquinone pool (vitamin K2), and a bd-type cytochrome" (see results and discussion in the reference). That should be checked in the article.--Miguelferig (talk) 20:42, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Resistance to osmosis?
In the Curing (food preservation) wiki, it says that lactobacilli come to the fore once any malevolent germs are killed off by osmosis - the "bad guys" lose water due to the high salt concentration outside their cell membranes. Why do the lactobacilli manage to prosper under these same conditions? Can the salt pass through their cell membrane? Does their plasma have a high salt concentration anyway? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.160.97.229 (talk) 04:36, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Either here or in the Sourdough article a couple of the Lacto' species' salt-tolerance levels are mentioned. Environmental salinity seems to play a huge part on gut flora's specific makeup in every environment and all species...at least all the ones with fermenting guts.  Mccabem (talk) 22:06, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Incorrect citation in regards to cancer activity
Citation #5 on the page is incorrect. It links to a source on saccharomyces, but the paper makes no mention to of Lactobacillus. I suggest we remove that section of the article or find the actual article it references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.187.97.22 (talk) 19:47, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Clinical content
Clinical content has been added supported by MEDR sources. I have therefore added the appropriate med templates. Best Regards,
 * Barbara (WVS) (talk) 02:17, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Human health claim
This was commented out of the Human health claim. I don't believe that these old primary sources can support such an emphatic biomedical claim, so I'm dumping them here in the hope that one day a secondary source will give us something to work on.

"Lactobacilli can also be used to restore particular physiological balance such as in the vaginal ecosystem."

--RexxS (talk) 22:05, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

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MEDRS
Reference 7 is a doctoral thesis, and cannot be used as the only reference to support a statement on the use in human medicine. See WP:MEDRS. There should be little difficulty finding suitable ones. This was mentioned above a year ago--it needs to be fixed.  DGG ( talk ) 16:24, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Major taxonomy change in the genus Lactobacillus (April 2020)
The genus of Lactobacillus has been been reclassified in to 25 genera. Therefore, the nomenclature for most articles with (former) Lactobacillus species is now incorrect.

Correcting this is a big task, and probably requires more Wiki experience than I have.

Kasros (talk) 09:35, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Weirdly specific suggestion of European vaginal microbiota as somehow unique and ethnically inherent, intrinsic
In the introduction, "In women of European ancestry, Lactobacillus species are normally a major part of the vaginal microbiota," in and in the vaginal microbiota segment in around 70% of women, a Lactobacillus species is dominant, although that has been found to vary between American women of European origin and those of African origin, the latter group tending to have more diverse vaginal microbiota. The sample was specifically American women from Virginia. Women of all groups have predominant Lactobacillus species in their vaginal microbiotas, even the same species of Lactobacillus makes the bulk of the microbiota, with something like a remaining 25-20% being more varied. Quoting another study: "The types of vaginal communities found in Japanese women were similar to those of Black and White women. As with White and Black women, most vaginal communities were dominated by lactobacilli, and only four species of Lactobacillus (Lactobacillus iners, Lactobacillus crispatus, Lactobacillus jensenii, and Lactobacillus gasseri) were commonly found. Communities dominated by multiple species of lactobacilli were common in Japanese and White women, but rare in Black women. The incidence, in Japanese women, of vaginal communities with several non-Lactobacillus species at moderately high frequencies was intermediate between Black women and White women.''' ('The Vaginal Bacterial Communities of Japanese Women Resemble Those of Women in Other Racial Groups,' FEMS Immunology and Medical Microbiology)" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 45.234.133.22 (talk • contribs) 2020-05-29T23:58:25 (UTC)


 * Going to look at this, partly because I need to evaluate where content goes after the 2020 split. My current, 5-minute impression is that the existing PMID 22746335 citation is not at fault here. It's a review that cites equally the Japanese paper and the American stuff. It also does NOT suggest that with a domination by a single species being correlated with general welfare and good outcomes in pregnancy, but maybe one of its references does. --Artoria2e5 🌉 03:39, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I can now report that this section, in fact, does not need to be moved as a result of Zheng. Still gotta think about how to fix it. Let me first forget about this xkcd comic. --Artoria2e5 🌉 05:50, 3 December 2023 (UTC)