Application of metagenomic sequencing to food safety: detection of Shiga Toxin-producing Escherichia coli on fresh bagged spinach.

ABSTRACT: Culture-independent diagnostics reduce the reliance on traditional (and slower) culture-based methodologies. Here we capitalize on advances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) to apply this approach to food pathogen detection utilizing NGS as an analytical tool. In this study, spiking spinach with Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) following an established FDA culture-based protocol was used in conjunction with shotgun metagenomic sequencing to determine the limits of detection, sensitivity, and specificity levels and to obtain information on the microbiology of the protocol. We show that an expected level of contamination (∼10 CFU/100 g) could be adequately detected (including key virulence determinants and strain-level specificity) within 8 h of enrichment at a sequencing dept

SUBMITTER: Leonard SR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4651076 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature