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Advanced Methods for Detection of Foodborne Pathogens

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Advanced Techniques in Diagnostic Microbiology

Abstract

Recent national attention has been focused on bacterial foodborne outbreaks involving retail meats, fresh vegetables, peanut butter, and cheese, highlighting the importance of the methodologies used to identify, characterize, and track these strains. Traditional methods, including microbiological isolation, biochemical characterization, and serotyping, are validated and internationally accepted; however, these methods are often laborious, time consuming, and lack detailed genetic information which may be necessary to distinguish foodborne pathogen outbreaks from unrelated strains. Advanced technologies, such as whole genome sequencing and culture-independent diagnostic technologies (CIDTs) including metagenomics, are becoming more regularly used for surveillance of the food supply by national foodborne pathogen surveillance programs including the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) in the USA. Whole genome sequencing schemes are being validated by state and federal labs nationwide to replace traditional methods such as serotyping, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, and antimicrobial susceptibility typing as this method is officially becoming the gold standard for foodborne pathogen outbreak detection. New bioinformatics tools are being designed to accurately predict antimicrobial resistance, serotype, sequence type, and evolutionary relatedness. While new and advanced molecular techniques are constantly evolving to become more complex and discriminatory, epidemiological information remains essential to meaningfully characterize outbreaks to preserve human health and the safety of our food.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodScienceResearch/WholeGenomeSequencingProgramWGS/ucm403550.htm

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microbial Food Safety, Office of New Animal Drug Evaluation, Center for Veterinary Medicine, U.S. FDA, Derwood, MD, USA

    Heather Harbottle

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  1. Heather Harbottle
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Correspondence to Heather Harbottle .

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  1. Departments of Laboratory Medicine and Internal Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA

    Yi-Wei Tang

  2. Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology and Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA

    Charles W. Stratton

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Harbottle, H. (2018). Advanced Methods for Detection of Foodborne Pathogens. In: Tang, YW., Stratton, C. (eds) Advanced Techniques in Diagnostic Microbiology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95111-9_9

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