Olivier Jousson
University of Trento, Italy
Title: MOLECULAR HIGH-RESOLUTION MONITORING OF LISTERIA MONOCYTOGENES ON FOOD PRODUCTS AND FOODASSOCIATED ENVIRONMENTS
Biography
Biography: Olivier Jousson
Abstract
We present the latest insights concerning molecular methods for qualitative and quantitative foodborne pathogen detection and characterization, with a focus on Listeria monocytogenes, a facultative intracellular human pathogen. The high mortality rate of listeriosis (around 20%) and the persistence of Listeria monocytogenes in food-associated environments makes its elimination or reduction a compulsory step before marketing potentially contaminated products. Besides methods based on cultural, immunological, or biochemical identification and enumeration of Listeria monocytogenes, a number of molecular methods with strain-level resolution have been developed in recent years for epidemiological investigations. These methods mainly include real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR), pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), multi-locus variable number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA), multi-locus sequence typing (MLST), multilocus genotyping (MLGT) and whole genome sequencing (WGS). Subtyping of L. monocytogenes strains can prove to be crucial to point source outbreaks in food processing plants. The emergence of WGS as a routine method should assist in the development of prospective epidemiological surveillance programs for L. monocytogenes and other pathogens relevant to public health.