Bacterial Lighthouses—Real-Time Detection of Yersinia enterocolitica by Quorum Sensing

Abstract

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 Yersinia enterocolitica 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.

Recent Progress in Biosensors Based on Biorecognition Molecules

“…Considering that biosensors are widely applied in environmental pollutant monitoring, detecting hazardous substances in foods and disease diagnosis [ 2 , 3 , 4 ], their advances and future trends should be highlighted, so we have organized this Special Issue entitled “Bioassays and Biosensors for Rapid Detection and Analysis”. Among the 10 papers published, 6 are articles, 3 are communications and 1 is a review.…”