Assessing the genome level diversity of Listeria monocytogenes from contaminated ice cream and environmental samples linked to a listeriosis outbreak in the United States

PLoS One. 2017 Feb 6;12(2):e0171389. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0171389. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

A listeriosis outbreak in the United States implicated contaminated ice cream produced by one company, which operated 3 facilities. We performed single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based whole genome sequencing (WGS) analysis on Listeria monocytogenes from food, environmental and clinical sources, identifying two clusters and a single branch, belonging to PCR serogroup IIb and genetic lineage I. WGS Cluster I, representing one outbreak strain, contained 82 food and environmental isolates from Facility I and 4 clinical isolates. These isolates differed by up to 29 SNPs, exhibited 9 pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) profiles and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) sequence type (ST) 5 of clonal complex 5 (CC5). WGS Cluster II contained 51 food and environmental isolates from Facility II, 4 food isolates from Facility I and 5 clinical isolates. Among them the isolates from Facility II and clinical isolates formed a clade and represented another outbreak strain. Isolates in this clade differed by up to 29 SNPs, exhibited 3 PFGE profiles and ST5. The only isolate collected from Facility III belonged to singleton ST489, which was in a single branch separate from Clusters I and II, and was not associated with the outbreak. WGS analyses clustered together outbreak-associated isolates exhibiting multiple PFGE profiles, while differentiating them from epidemiologically unrelated isolates that exhibited outbreak PFGE profiles. The complete genome of a Cluster I isolate allowed the identification and analyses of putative prophages, revealing that Cluster I isolates differed by the gain or loss of three putative prophages, causing the banding pattern differences among all 3 AscI-PFGE profiles observed in Cluster I isolates. WGS data suggested that certain ice cream varieties and/or production lines might have contamination sources unique to them. The SNP-based analysis was able to distinguish CC5 as a group from non-CC5 isolates and differentiate among CC5 isolates from different outbreaks/incidents.

MeSH terms

  • Disease Outbreaks*
  • Food Microbiology
  • Foodborne Diseases / epidemiology
  • Foodborne Diseases / microbiology
  • Genetic Variation*
  • Genome, Bacterial*
  • Humans
  • Ice Cream / microbiology*
  • Listeria monocytogenes / classification
  • Listeria monocytogenes / genetics*
  • Listeria monocytogenes / virology
  • Listeriosis / epidemiology*
  • Listeriosis / microbiology*
  • Listeriosis / transmission
  • Multilocus Sequence Typing
  • Phylogeny
  • Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
  • Prophages / genetics
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA
  • Serotyping
  • United States / epidemiology

Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.