Bioluminescence as a real-time monitor of injury and recovery in Salmonella typhimurium.

Bioluminescence provides a novel tool with which to probe in real time the recovery of microorganisms such as Salmonella typhimurium from sub-lethal injury, a condition of immense importance in the enumeration of microorganisms in food and environmental samples such as from estuarine waters. We describe the application of in vivo bioluminescence to monitor the recovery of S. typhimurium from freeze injury and, in addition, we explore the effect of multiple stress conditions on microbial recovery where we compare bioluminescence with viable count measurement.