Phenolic compounds are well known for their antimicrobial activity. They may provide an interesting solution to ensure food safety by preventing the growth of foodborne pathogens while addressing the wishes of consumers for the use of natural preservatives in food and favoring the reuse of agro-industry byproducts. However, their mechanism of action is still not very well understood. Here, we aimed to decipher the complex mechanism of action of eight phenolic acids by decomposing their effects, such as the general effect of the decrease of extracellular pH (γ(pH)) and specific inhibitory effects of the undissociated (γ(A_u)) and dissociated (γ(A_d)) forms. We thus developed three different models and applied them to a dataset of Listeria monocytogenes growth rates experimentally obtained in the presence of various concentrations of phenolic acids at several pHs. The model that best fits the dataset was selected for each phenolic acid to explore the potential mechanisms. The results show that the antimicrobial activity is mainly due to the effect of the undissociated forms, except for chlorogenic and gallic acids, for which the antimicrobial activity is mainly due to a decrease in extracellular pH. In addition, the dissociated forms of p-coumaric and ferulic acids show significant inhibitory activity.

酚类化合物以其抗菌活性而闻名。它们可以通过防止食源性病原体的生长，同时满足消费者在食品中使用天然防腐剂的愿望并促进农用工业副产品的再利用，提供一种确保食品安全的有趣解决方案。然而，它们的作用机理仍然不是很了解。在这里，我们旨在通过分解八种酚酸的作用来解释其复杂的作用机理，例如降低细胞外pH（γ（pH））的一般作用和未解离的（γ（A _u）的特异性抑制作用。）和离解（γ（A _d））形式。因此，我们开发了三种不同的模型并将其应用于单核细胞增生李斯特菌的数据集在多种pH值下，在各种浓度的酚酸存在下，通过实验获得的生长速率。为每种酚酸选择最适合数据集的模型，以探索潜在的机制。结果表明，除绿原酸和没食子酸外，抗菌活性主要归因于未离解形式的影响，而绿原酸和没食子酸的抗菌活性主要归因于细胞外pH的降低。另外，对香豆酸和阿魏酸的解离形式显示出显着的抑制活性。