Current Perspectives on Viable but Non-Culturable Foodborne Pathogenic Bacteria: A Review

Abstract

Foodborne diseases caused by foodborne pathogens pose risks to food safety. Effective detection and efficient inactivation of pathogenic bacteria has always been a research hotspot in the field of food safety. Complicating these goals, bacteria can be induced to adopt a viable but non-culturable (VBNC) state under adverse external environmental stresses. When in the VBNC state, pathogens cannot form visible colonies during traditional culture but remain metabolically active and toxic. The resulting false negative results in growth-related assays can jeopardize food safety. This review summarizes the latest research on VBNC foodborne pathogens, including induction conditions, detection methods, mechanism of VBNC formation, and possible control strategies. It is hoped that this review can provide ideas and methods for future research on VBNC foodborne pathogenic bacteria.

The Rapid Detection of Salmonella enterica, Listeria monocytogenes, and Staphylococcus aureus via Polymerase Chain Reaction Combined with Magnetic Beads and Capillary Electrophoresis

“…However, RNA is generally less stable than DNA and can degrade quickly when exposed to environmental factors, such as temperature, pH, and enzymatic activity [70]. Another approach involves the application of viability dyes, such as propidium monoazide (PMA), DyeTox13, or thiazole orange monoazide (TOMO) [14,71]. Previous studies have indicated that these dyes could inhibit signals arising from dead cells [72,73].…”

“…Previous studies have indicated that these dyes could inhibit signals arising from dead cells [72,73]. However, the effectiveness of these dyes may be influenced by the food matrices and bacterial species [71]. Thus, future studies are suggested to explore the effectiveness of these dyes in combination with the PCR-CE assay for detecting live foodborne pathogens in various food samples.…”

Rapid detection methods for foodborne pathogens based on nucleic acid amplification: Recent advances, remaining challenges, and possible opportunities

“…Note that most studies involving PMA treatment were PCR-based methods ( Tables S1-2 ), and scant information exists concerning its integration with isothermal amplification techniques. Previous studies have pointed out that employing PMA to differentiate between DNA originating from live and death cells encounters several challenges, including the influence of food matrices, heat treatment, and the concentration of bacterial cells ( Lv et al, 2020 , Petersen et al, 2021 , Zhang et al, 2023 ). Therefore, the design and optimization of the treatment conditions for using PMA coupled with a certain amplification method are necessary.…”

Lactiplantibacillus plantarum monolayer enhanced bactericidal action of carvacrol: biofilm inhibition of viable foodborne pathogens and spoilage microorganisms

“…In the food industry, microorganisms can adhere to packaging surfaces, form a biofilm, and compromise the shelf-life of food products (Galié et al, 2018;Carrascosa et al, 2021). In addition, studies show that bacteria in a biofilm state are more likely disposed to enter in the "viable but nonculturable" (VBNC) condition, where the cells are unable to grow and replicate on standard solid culture media, eluding detection by using conventional microbial culture-based techniques (Li and Zhao, 2020;Qi et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2023). In this scenario, flow cytometry (FCM) emerges as a real-time technique for identifying the culture-uninvestigable cellular physiological state.…”