Toxicological evaluation of Microbacterium foliorum SYG27B-MF

Microbacterium foliorum is a naturally occurring bacteria in cruciferous vegetables and ripened cheese. The safety of M. foliorum SYG27B-MF has been assessed in both acute and subchronic studies and a battery of mutagenicity and clastogenicity tests. In a single dose acute study, the LD₅₀ of M. foliorum SYG27B-MF was greater than 3 g/kg bw or 5.1 × 10¹⁶ colony forming unit (CFU)/kg bw, the highest dose tested. In a 90-day subchronic toxicity study in 80 Sprague-Dawley rats, no animals died and there were no treatment-related abnormalities at doses of 0, 500, 1000, or 2000 mg/kg bw. In a 90-day repeated toxicity test, the no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) M. foliorum SYG27B-MF was 2000 mg/kg/day or 3.4 × 10¹⁶ CFU/kg bw/day, the highest level tested. A mutagenicity study using reverse bacterial mutation tests and a genotoxicity study employing cultured hamster ovarian fibroblasts (CHO-K1) cell showed that M. foliorum SYG27B-MF was not mutagenic or clastogenic in the presence or absence metabolic activation. In an in vivo mouse micronucleus assay, M. foliorum SYG27B-MF did not induce did not induce micronuclei formation in the bone marrow cells of mice, indicating that it is non-clastogenic. The results from these studies support the safety of M. foliorum SYG27B-MF for use as a production organism for human food ingredients.