Materialsandmethods
2.1. Bacterialstrains—isolation, strainidentification and
growth conditions
All 17EPSproducingisolateswerecharacterizedbiochemi-
cally andgenotypicallyusing16SrDNAsequencing.The
GenBank andEMBLaccessionnumbersforreference16S
rRNA genesequencesarerepresentedin Table 1. All17LAB
isolates thatwerepreservedat 20 1C onDeMan,Rogosa
and Sharpe(MRS,MERCK)brothcontaining10%glycerol(v/v)
and infreeze-driedformandwerepropagatedtwicepriorto
begin anyexperiment.Theincubationtemperaturewas