Improved multiplex PCR assay for simultaneous detection of Bacillus cereus emetic and enterotoxic strains

Toxigenic Profiling of Enterotoxin-Producing Bacillus cereus Isolated from Marketed Raw Chicken Meat and Human Subjects by Triplex and Multiplex PCR

“…Members of the genus Bacillus are well known for their great diversity and widespread distribution in nature (Oh et al, 2012) and these bacteria Bacillus cereus group (B. cereus sensulato) consisting of the genetically closely related species B. cereus, B. thuringiensis, B. anthracis, B. mycoides, B. pseudomycoides, and B. weihenstephanensis is widely recognized as the causative agent of food borne illness (Helgason et al, 2000;Kim et al, 2012;Jimenez et al, 2013). Due to its wide distribution in the environment and ability to produce spores, the Gram-positive, rodshaped, opportunistic human pathogen grow well in wide adverse environmental condition, the pH ranges from 4.5 to 9.3, with high water activity 0.92 and the temperature ranges for growth from 4ºC to 50ºC (Kramer and Gilbert, 1989).…”

“…The diarrheal food poisoning is caused by heat-labile protein enterotoxins produced during favorable vegetative growth of B. cereus in the small intestine with nonhaemolytic enterotoxin (nhe), enterotoxin FM (entFM), Haemolysin BL (hbl) and cytotoxin K (cytK) are of the highest importance and therefore often used for the detection of enterotoxic strains (Kim et al, 2012;Park et al, 2009).…”

“…Therefore, it is of significant quality food safety issues, medical and economic importance and several methods have been developed for its detection. These methods include a wide range of approaches including but not limited to conventional culture methods (Fricker et al, 2008;Kumar et al, 2011), biochemical and morphological tests (Fernandez-No et al, 2011;Kumar et al, 2009), and a variety of molecular approaches using toxin or other appropriate genes of B. cereus group species as target (Kim et al, 2012). Recently, molecular diagnostic tools mainly focus on the toxin genes since they are broadly distributed within the B. cereus group (Wehrle et al, 2010) and the toxin gene profiles might be better than the exact species for the outbreak investigations (Ehlingschulz and Messelhausser, 2013) and assessment of toxin genes prevalence in wild B. cereus isolates would help controlling these potential pathogens in food industry (McKillip, 2000).…”

Isolation of Bacillus cereus Group from the Fecal Material of Endangered Wood Turtles

“…Members of this group are the causative agent of foodborne illnesses [16,18,21]. These organisms are widely distributed in the environment.…”

“…Foodborne illness may result from eating contaminated food which could cause diarrheal or emetic type syndromes in humans [20,29]. Diarrheal food poisoning is caused by heat-labile protein enterotoxins, including nonhemolytic enterotoxin (NHE), enterotoxin FM (EntFM), Hemolysin BL (HBL), and cytotoxin K (CytK), produced during the vegetative growth of B. cereus sensu lato in the small intestine [8,21]. The emetic syndrome is caused by emetic toxin (cereulide), a 1.2 kDa heat and acid stable small 3 ).…”