Comparative Analysis of Pathogenicity Assays and PCR for Listeria monocytogenes Isolated from Animal, Raw Food and Environmental Sources in Korea

Sanghun Park, Jihun Jung, Younghee Oh, Jibho Lee, Seunghee Ryu, Hyowon Jung, Sunhee Park, Miok Song, Gunyong Park, Sungmin Choi, Sangmi Lee, Junghun Kim, YoungZoo Chae, Byungyeol Jung, Myunghun Lee, Hyunsoo Kim

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Seoul Metropolitan Government Research Institute of Public Health and Environment, Yangjae-Dong, Seocho-Gu, Seoul, Korea.

DOI: 10.4236/aim.2013.32029                

Abstract

Results of PCR with oligonucleotide primers were designed from the assembled panel of four potential virulence genes (two of internalin gene and two of transcriptional regulator gene). Most of the isolates including reference strains were reactive by PCR, whereas the other strains (No.80, 81, and 83) isolated from pork, were non-reactive by PCR. In particular, all pork isolates were PCR-negative for two primers (lmo2672 and 2821) sets tested. However, No.82 was positive for lmo1134 primer, and No.84 was positive for lmo2470 of pork isolates. It was observed that all Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes) penetrate Vero cells, although the invasion efficiency of each strain varied (between 0.5 and 18.9%). When compared in cell assay with PFGE, the results were shown that the mean invasion efficiency for lineage II isolate (2.6%) was significantly lower (ANOVA-test, p < 0.05) than that for lineage I (12.9%) and III isolates (10.3%).

Keywords

PFGE; Vero Cell; Listeria monocytogenes; in Vitro Assay

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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