Profiling Bacillus cereus populations in a traditional style, hot-drinks vending machine and vended hot chocolate drink using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) techniques

Advanced Methods for Detection of Bacillus cereus and Its Pathogenic Factors

“…Molecular methods used for B. cereus identification provide many advantages compared to the traditional methods such as versatility, lower time and resource consumption, and high specificity [36]. In the past decades, different techniques based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) have been developed for B. cereus detection, such as Nested PCR [37], Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA PCR (RAPD PCR) [38] and Real-Time PCR (RTi-PCR) [39]. The amplification step is coupled to different electrophoresis procedures such as Pulse Field Gel Electrophoresis (PFGE) [40], Temporal Temperature Gradient gel Electrophoresis (TTGE) [41] and Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis (DGGE) [42].…”

“…The resulting discriminative and informative profiles have permitted us to trace the spread of B. cereus contamination in a food plant. Hall et al, [38] were able to characterize the microbiological hazard of products provided by vending machines with the use of PCR and RAPD PCR. Using specific primers that target the gyrB gene encoding DNA gyrase subunit B, they found out that almost 90% of bacteria isolated from hot chocolate powder and hot chocolate drinks of vending machine belonged to B. cereus group.…”