Integrating genomics and artificial intelligent tools to unlock the safety and uricolytic activities of promising purinolytic Lactobacillus plantarum L123

• The 3,266 genes were re-annotated using AI-based protein prediction to map the purine metabolism pathway. • A novel 5-hydroxy-isoourate hydrolase provides new insights into the urinolysis mechanism in probiotic Lactobacillus . • No virulence factors or hemolytic activity were demonstrated. • L. plantarum L123 is safe and shows potential as a purine-degrading probiotic for low-purine food. Lactobacillus plantarum L123 is a newly-isolated selenium-enriched, purine-degrading probiotic from fermented tea in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China. In addition to high stress resistance and antioxidant capacity, L. plantarum L123 displayed unique complete purinolytic activities including degradation of uric acid into allantoin, making it a good candidate for revealing the currently unresolved uricolytic mechanisms of lactobacillus strains. This study firstly investigated its safety and uricolytic activities by integrating genomics, emerging artificial intelligence-based techniques and exploratory experiments. A total of 3,266 genes were annotated, unlocking a new purinolytic pathway including purine nucleosidase, adenine deaminase, 2′,3′-cyclic-nucleotide 2′-phosphodiesterase, 3′-nucleotidase and 5-hydroxyisourate hydrolase. L. plantarum L123 exhibits similar antibiotic resistance profiling as other L. plantarum strains except unique sensitivity to gentamicin, rifampicin, tetracycline, and chloramphenicol. Furthermore, neither toxic factor nor hemolytic activity was observed, indicating that L. plantarum L123 is an excellent safe probiotic with high development potential for purine degradation.