Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME, Forckenbeckstraße 6, 52074 Aachen, Germany.
Quh-Lab Lebensmittelsicherheit, Siegener Str. 29, 57080 Siegen, Germany.
Biosensors (Basel). 2021 Dec 16;11(12):517. doi: 10.3390/bios11120517.
Foodborne zoonotic pathogens have a severe impact on food safety. The demand for animal-based food products (meat, milk, and eggs) is increasing, and therefore faster methods are necessary to detect infected animals or contaminated food before products enter the market. However, conventional detection is based on time-consuming microbial cultivation methods. Here, the establishment of a quorum sensing-based method for detection of foodborne pathogens as in a co-cultivation approach using a bacterial biosensor carrying a special sensor plasmid is described. We combined selective enrichment with the simultaneous detection of pathogens by recording autoinducer-1-induced bioluminescent response of the biosensor. This new approach enables real-time detection with a calculated sensitivity of one initial cell in a sample after 15.3 h of co-cultivation, while higher levels of initial contamination can be detected within less than half of the time. Our new method is substantially faster than conventional microbial cultivation and should be transferrable to other zoonotic foodborne pathogens. As we could demonstrate, quorum sensing is a promising platform for the development of sensitive assays in the area of food quality, safety, and hygiene.
食源性病原体对食品安全有严重影响。人们对动物源性食品（肉、奶和蛋）的需求不断增加，因此需要更快的方法来在受感染的动物或受污染的食物进入市场之前进行检测。然而，传统的检测方法基于耗时的微生物培养方法。在这里，我们描述了一种基于群体感应的方法，用于检测食源性病原体，该方法使用携带特殊传感器质粒的细菌生物传感器进行共培养。我们结合了选择性富集和同时检测，通过记录生物传感器的自动诱导物-1 诱导的生物发光反应来实现。这种新方法可以在 15.3 小时的共培养后实时检测到样品中初始细胞的计算灵敏度为 1 个，而在不到一半的时间内就可以检测到更高水平的初始污染。我们的新方法比传统的微生物培养快得多，应该可以转移到其他食源性病原体上。正如我们所证明的，群体感应是开发食品质量、安全和卫生领域敏感检测方法的一个很有前途的平台。
