Metagenomic characterization of bacterial biofilm in four food processing plants in Colombia

Abstract

Bacteria inside biofilms are more persistent and resistant to stress conditions found in the production environment of food processing plants, thus representing a constant risk for product safety and quality. Therefore, the aim of this study was to characterize, using 16S rRNA sequencing, the bacterial communities from biofilms found in four food processing plants (P1, P2, P3, and P4). In total, 50 samples from these four processing plants were taken after cleaning and disinfection processes. Four phyla: Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroides represented over 94% of the operational taxonomic units found across these four plants. A total of 102 families and 189 genera were identified. Two genera, Pseudomonas spp. and Acinetobacter spp., were the most frequently found (93.47%) across the four plants. In P1, Pseudomonas spp. and Lactobacillus spp. were the dominant genera, whereas Lactobacillus spp. and Streptococcus spp. were identified in P2. On the other hand, biofilms found in P3 and P4 mainly consisted of Pseudomonas spp. and Acinetobacter spp. Our results indicate that different bacterial genera of interest to the food industry due to their ability to form biofilm and affect food quality can coexist inside biofilms, and as such, persist in production environments, representing a constant risk for manufactured foods. In addition, the core microbiota identified across processing plants evaluated was probably influenced by type of food produced and cleaning and disinfection processes performed in each one of these.

Analysis of microbiota structure in cooked ham as influenced by chemical composition and processing treatments: Identification of spoilage bacteria and elucidation on contamination route

“…Moreover, the genus Leuconostoc was found in the four sampled surfaces, validating the cross-contamination product-surfaces-product. These results are concordant with the study on meat products factories reported by Caraballo Guzmán et al (2020) , where Proteobacteria represent 51.7% and 45.4% of OTUs of two factories. Along with that, the family Alyciclobacillus was found in occurrences of 66.6% and 33.3% for both meat factories, and the genus Acinetobacter had the highest occurrences due to persistence and survival ability on facility environments.…”

“…Bacterial identity was determined by NGS techniques using the Miseq Illumina platform (Illumina, San Diego, USA), targeting the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene. Metagenomic profiles based on amplicons of bacterial communities and their composition analysis were performed under protocols proposed by Caraballo Guzmán et al (2020) . The number of observed OTUs and alpha diversity metrics were calculated as Chao1, Heip, and Shannon indexes for ham treatments.…”

Response of a Coastal Microbial Community to Olivine Addition in the Muping Marine Ranch, Yantai

“…However, the analysis of similarities suggested that PA bacterial communities of the control and olivine-added groups were different after 10 days of incubation. The interaction between olivine particles and biofilm-forming microbes was considered the main reason for changes in PA bacterial community composition ( Shirokova et al, 2012 ; Caraballo Guzman et al, 2020 ). Phyla Bacteroidota and Firmicutes have an inclination for growth attached to particles ( Fernandez-Gomez et al, 2013 ; Zhang et al, 2016 ; Bachmann et al, 2018 ).…”

Co-Occurrence of Listeria spp. and Spoilage Associated Microbiota During Meat Processing Due to Cross-Contamination Events

“…Since all these genera are also highly abundant and include species that are frequently described as spoilage organisms, the widespread establishment of these bacteria throughout the facility is (Odeyemi et al, 2020). In another study, bacterial communities from biofilms in four FPEs were characterized by 16S rRNA gene sequencing: Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteriota, and Bacteroidota represented over 94% of the operational taxonomic units, and Pseudomonas and Acinetobacter were the most dominant genera (93.47%;Caraballo Guzmán et al, 2020). Pseudomonas and Acinetobacter were the most frequently isolated genera surviving on conveyor belts after cleaning and disinfection in meat processing plants (Fagerlund et al, 2017).…”