Tomato juice can kill the superbug salmonella, a new study has revealed. Scientists have shown that tomato juice also kills other bacteria that can harm people’s digestive and urinary tract health.
Salmonella Typhi is a human-specific pathogen often transmitted in food that causes all the symptoms of food poisoning.
The team from Cornell University, New York, set out to discover which antimicrobial( a substance that either eliminates or halts the growth of microorganisms) peptides in tomato juice made it so effective against salmonella.
First, they checked to see if tomato juice really does kill Salmonella Typhi and once they had confirmed it did, the team looked at the tomato genome( all of an organism’s genetic information) to find the antimicrobial peptides that were involved. Antimicrobial peptides( short sequences of amino acids joined together by peptide bonds) are very small proteins that impair the bacterial membrane and keep them as intact organisms.
They studied four of them and found that two were effective in killing Salmonella Typhi by impairing the bacterial membrane, a protective layer that surrounds the pathogen(any agent or organism capable of causing illness).
Their results, published in the journal Microbiology Spectrum, also went on to show firstly the peptides’ ability to kill variants of the bacteria where it was most common. They looked at how effective tomato juice was in killing both Salmonella and other pathogens that can hurt people’s digestive and urinary tract health.
The team discovered that tomato juice kills both Salmonella Typhi and its variants, as well as other bacteria( common, primarily free-living creatures that frequently just have one biological cell) that can harm people’s digestive and urinary tract health.
“Our main goal in this study was to find out if tomato and tomato juice can kill enteric pathogens, including Salmonella Typhi, and if so, what qualities they have that make them work,” said Associate Professor Dr. Jeongmin Song from the University’s Department of Microbiology & Immunology.
“Our research shows that tomato and tomato juice can get rid of enteric bacteria like Salmonella,” she added.
The researchers said they hope that when the public learns about the outcome of the study, they will want to eat and drink more tomatoes as well as other fruits and vegetables.
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