Recent Advances in the Study of the Genotypic Diversity and Ecology of Listeria monocytogenes

Abstract

Listeria monocytogenes, an intracellular pathogen, is the causative agent of listeriosis, a serious epidemic and sporadic food-borne disease. The clinical manifestations of listeriosis include meningitis, meningoencephalitis, septicemia, spontaneous abortion, perinatal infections, and gastroenteritis. Although rare in comparison to other food-borne diseases, listeriosis has a high rate of lethality (about 30%), making L. monocytogenes an important pathogen. L. monocytogenes can survive in a broad range of ecological niches, including farm environments and food-processing plants and in a wide range of hosts, including humans and many species of mammals. Furthermore, the capacity to adapt and survive under extreme conditions allows this bacterium to exist ubiquitously in the environment and to survive and proliferate under conditions within the food supply. Although the study of L. monocytogenes has already been extensively reviewed, knowledge about this pathogen has been expanding rapidly. Against the background of the growing body of information on this bacterium, the present review mostly discusses advances made in the study of this pathogen over the last 5 years.

Prevalence of shiga toxin producing Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, and Listeria monocytogenes at public access watershed sites in a California Central Coast agricultural region

“…Studies of L. monocytogenes ecology report survival in the environment for several months (Welshimer, 1960 , 1968 ). Given that L. monocytogenes has the ability to grow in conditions of both high and low osmolarity, adapt to acidic conditions, and live inside and outside a host these would suggest that it would be a robust organism in this region (Fenlon, 1985 ; Kimura, 2006 ).…”

Optical Immunosensor for the Detection of Listeria monocytogenes in Food Matrixes

“… 3 − 5 LM species are widely present in the soil, water, feed, vegetation, farms, and industrial plants. 6 − 11 The main isolation source for LM is food materials such as milk products, seafood, vegetables, and raw and cooked meats 12 − 16 and hence the contamination has been initiated from these food origins. 17 , 18 LM is used to grow at temperatures ranging between −0.4 and 45 °C, at pH values of 5.0–9.6, and it has an ability to survive even at high salt concentrations and also low-water activity.…”

Genomic Diversity and Homologous Recombination in Vibrio parahaemolyticus as Revealed by Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) and Multilocus Sequence Analysis (MLSA)

“…V. alginolyticus and V. parahaemolyticus share 67% DNA-DNA hybridization similarity (DDH), and 57% with the pair V. harveyi and V. campbellii 5,21) . In spite of the close relatedness between these species, genomic fingerprinting analyses, such as amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and rep-PCR, and multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) clearly discriminate the bacterial strains and species 5,11,18,20) . Currently, researchers are able to identify their isolates through the internet using curated MLSA data of vibrios (http://www.taxvibrio.lncc.br/) 22,24) .…”