Development of a PCR-based rapid method for the detection of Listeria monocytogenes in food samples after enrichment steps

Global Medical Microbiology Summit & Expo

November 28-29, 2016 San Francisco, USA

Shumaila Ali and Abdul Basit Khan

Jinnah University for Women, Pakistan

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Med Microb Diagn

Abstract :

Listeria monocytogenes is a Gram positive, facultative and opportunistic pathogen causing food-borne infections in human worldwide. Although cause major problems in immunocompromised individuals such as pregnant women, neonate and elderly. The old conventional methods for the identification of L. monocytogenes in foods are laborious and require almost 3-5 days giving ready results. To overcome this problem we have demonstrated a fast, non-conventional, simple, sensitive and rapid Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)-based method by using the primers for prfA gene sequence for the detection of Listeria in food samples. Experiments were to observe the sensitivity of this primer in number of combinations. Optimization studies were conducted using milk samples spiked with different inoculum size and for different time intervals. It was observed that this method efficiently detect minimum contamination of Listeria as tested with spiked samples in around 14 hours. Comparable results were observed when this method was applied to detect Listeria in naturally contaminated samples along with conventional methods. The proposed method can be employed to detect Listeria monocytogenes in parallel to standard conventional methods.

Biography :

Shumaila Ali has completed her MPhil in Microbiology from Jinna University for Women, Karachi, Pakistan under the supervision of Abdul Basit Khan at the Microbiology Department. She is also a Lecturer of Microbiology Department at Jinnah University for Women.

Email: sho.malik-14@hotmail.com