In recent years, the antibacterial activity of plant essential oils has been extensively researched and applied in the food, drug, and cosmetics industries. Extensive research has discovered that plant essential oils can inhibit microbial growth in various ways such as disrupting the bacterial cell membrane, interfering with cellular metabolic activities, and influencing the synthesis of bacterial nucleic acids and proteins. Furthermore, plant essential oils exhibit a complex composition, with multiple target sites and broad-spectrum antibacterial properties. With the continuous advancement of research, omics technologies have made it possible to dissect the antibacterial mechanisms of plant essential oils. This article starts with an introduction to the classification and antibacterial activities of plant essential oils, and then summarizes recent progress in research on the antibacterial mechanisms of plant essential oils from the aspects of transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and multi-omics. Finally, this review provides an outlook on the future of this field, aiming to provide a theoretical foundation for understanding the multi-target antibacterial mechanisms of plant essential oils and for their application in the food industry.

The contamination status of cold resistant Morganella psychrotolerans in commercially available aquatic products was investigated, and the generation of histamine by its isolates was explored. A total of 100 samples of commercially available fish from Guangdong province were surveyed. The results revealed a widespread distribution of M. psychrotolerans with a contamination rate of 34%. The contamination rates for red-fleshed and white-fleshed fish were 35.9% and 27.3%, respectively. Specifically, the mackerel samples had a contamination rate of 38.24%, and the tuna samples had a contamination rate of 29.41% among all positive samples. Sixteen strains of M. psychrotolerans were isolated from the positive samples, and all isolates produced histamine levels exceeding 1000 mg/L after 48 h incubation at 20 ℃. Notably, isolate 1 showed higher histamine-producing capacity than the type strain. Although the two strains exhibited no significant differences in growth curves at varying temperatures (4 and 20 ℃ ), their histamine-producing capacities were different. After 10 days of culture at 4 ℃, histamine production was higher by isolate 1 than the type strain, while the opposite result was observed after 60 h of culture at 20 ℃. These findings offer crucial theoretical support for addressing the problem of histamine accumulation in cold chain aquatic products.