Why Lactobacillus jensenii?

For our project, we decided to study Lactobacillus jensenii, as it appeared to be a promising candidate for several reasons.

Indeed, L. jensenii is a normal inhabitant of the lower reproductive tract in healthy women. More than 20 species have been detected in the vagina, but in healthy conditions, only one or two Lactobacilli from a range of three or four species (mainly L. crispatus and L. iners, but also L. jensenii and L. gasseri) are dominant [1][2].

While gynecological studies have found that bacterial population makeup differs around the world (e.g. L. crispatus and L. jensenii are dominant in Caucasian populations while L. crispatus and L. gasseri are dominant in women of Japanese descent) [3], we believe that the work we do towards developing L. jensenii as an engineering platform will be transferable to similar species. Indeed, if we can demonstrate our concept using L. jensenii, the same methodology will surely be applicable to other inhabitants of the vaginal microbiota to improve the effects of our non-hormonal contraception system.

Discovered by F. Gasser, M. Mandel, and M. Rogosa in 1969 [4], L. jensenii is very little used in synthetic biology. This bacteria is very little known and few research team have been working with this strain for the last decades. Finding information for how to work with this bacterium was arduous to the team. However we are convinced that future work on this strain can be crucial for women health. This is why we decided to create a toolbox for working with L. jensenii.