Detection of acid and hop shock induced responses in beer spoiling Lactobacillus brevis by MALDI-TOF MS

Due to the harsh environment, microorganisms encounter in beer, spoilage bacteria must be able to customise their metabolism and physiology in an order to master various kinds of perturbations. Proteomic approaches have been used to examine differences between various beer spoilage bacteria and between different stress conditions, such as acid and hop (Humulus lupulus) stress. However, these investigations cannot detect changes in low molecular weight (lmw) proteins (<150 amino acids). Therefore, for the first time, we herein present data from a proteomic study of lmw proteins for two Lactobacillus (L.) brevis strains exposed to acid stress or, respectively, two different qualities of hop induced stress. We used MALDI-TOF MS as analytical tool for the detection of lmw stress response proteins due to its high sensitivity and low throughput times. Comparing a hop-sensitive and a hop-tolerant strain, detection of the fatty acid biosynthesis-associated acyl carrier protein varied between different stress conditions and incubation times. The findings coincide with previous studies of our group regarding the fatty acid cell membrane composition of beer spoiling L. brevis. It is demonstrated that MALDI-TOF MS is a fast tool to detect and characterise stress situations in beer spoiling bacteria along the lmw sub-proteome.