Wholegenome sequencing as the gold standard approach for control of Listeria monocytogenes in the food chain

Brankica Lakicevic; Vesna Jankovic; Ariane Pietzka; Werner Ruppitsch

doi:10.1016/j.jfp.2022.10.002

Wholegenome sequencing as the gold standard approach for control of Listeria monocytogenes in the food chain

J Food Prot. 2023 Jan;86(1):100003. doi: 10.1016/j.jfp.2022.10.002. Epub 2022 Dec 16.

Authors

Brankica Lakicevic¹, Vesna Jankovic², Ariane Pietzka³, Werner Ruppitsch⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department for Microbiological and Molecular-biological Testing, Institute of Meat Hygiene and Technology, Belgrade, Serbia. Electronic address: brankica.lakicevic@inmes.rs.
² Department for Microbiological and Molecular-biological Testing, Institute of Meat Hygiene and Technology, Belgrade, Serbia.
³ Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene/National Reference Laboratory for Listeria Division for Public Health, Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, Graz, Austria.
⁴ Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene Division for Public Health, Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, Vienna, Austria.

PMID: 36916580
DOI: 10.1016/j.jfp.2022.10.002

Abstract

Listeria monocytogenes has been implicated in numerous outbreaks and related deaths of listeriosis. In food production, L. monocytogenes occurs in raw food material and above all, through postprocessing contamination. The use of next-generation sequencing technologies such as whole-genome sequencing (WGS) facilitates foodborne outbreak investigations, pathogen source tracking and tracing geographic distributions of different clonal complexes, routine microbiological/epidemiological surveillance of listeriosis, and quantitative microbial risk assessment. WGS can also be used to predict various genetic traits related to virulence, stress, or antimicrobial resistance, which can be of great benefit for improving food safety management as well as public health.

Keywords: Clonal complexes; Genetic markers; Outbreak investigation; Source tracking; Surveillance; WGS.

Publication types

Review
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Disease Outbreaks
Food Chain
Food Microbiology
Humans
Listeria monocytogenes* / genetics
Listeriosis* / epidemiology
Listeriosis* / prevention & control
Multilocus Sequence Typing