Abstract:Probiotic character and safety assessment of 20 lactic acid bacteria isolated from Shanxi aged vinegar was investigated in the present work. The results showed that L. plantarum 172, 173 and L. fermenti 179 were potential probiotics with strong ability of DPPH scavenging, cholesterol removal, biogenic amine degradation and ACE-I activity. Also, the higher producing property of bacteriocin, GABA and acetoin were observed in the three strains. The virulence genes PCR results showed that most of the strains were negative, with only a few strains showing hyl (2/20) and ace (2/20) positive. The most detected antimicrobial resistance genes were ermB (70%, 14/20) and tetM (65%, 13/20). blaZ and vanX were detected in two strains of L. amylovorus. Additionally, 7 strains carried tdc genes (tyrosine decarboxylase), 5 strains carried odc (ornithine decarboxilase) genes, and the hdc (histidine decarboxylase) genes were not detected in this study. All of strains were negative in the test of indole, nitrate reductase and D-lactic acid producing. The mice toxicology test furtherly demonstrated the safety of L. plantarum 172, 173 and L. fermenti 179, which provided a scientific basis for future research and application.