Use of Fatty Acid Profiles to Identify Food-Borne Bacterial Pathogens and Aerobic Endospore-Forming Bacilli

Abstract

Capillary gas chromatography (GC) with flame ionization detection was used to determine the cellular fatty acid profiles of various food-borne microbial pathogens and to compare the fatty acid profiles of spores and vegetative cells of the same endospore-forming bacilli. Fifteen bacteria, representing eight genera (Staphylococcus, Listeria, Bacillus, Yersinia, Salmonella, Shigella, Escherichia, and Vibrio) and 11 species were used to compare the extracted fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs). Endospore-forming bacilli were processed to obtain pure spores and whole cell FAMEs for GC analysis. A data set for each bacterial agent was prepared using fatty acid profiles from five replicates prepared on different days. The results showed that these fatty acid intensity profiles were unique for each of the 11 species and that they could be used as a fingerprint for the organisms. The cellular fatty acid profiles for Bacillus anthracis and Bacillus cereus show that there are two branched chain fatty acids, iso 17:1 omega10c and 17:1 anteiso, which are unique in these species. Iso 17:1 omega10c is present in B. cereus vegetative cells and spores but is not observed in B. anthracis. The 17:1 anteiso fatty acid is present in B. anthracis cells but not in B. cereus cells. Fatty acids 16:0 2OH and 17:0 iso 3OH are present in B. anthracis and B. cereus spores but not in the vegetative cells. In summary, analysis of FAMEs from bacteria and spores can provide a sensitive procedure for the identification of food-borne pathogens.

Budvicia diplopodorum sp. nov. and emended description of the genus Budvicia

“…The component C 17 : 0 was found in three members of the genus Yersinia tested in this study and has been reported for the genus Yersinia and other genera within the family Enterobacteriaceae by other authors (Jantzen & Lassen, 1980;Kämpfer et al, 2005;Whittaker et al, 2005;Madhaiyan et al, 2010;Rameshkumar et al, 2010).…”

“…As far as we are aware, all published fatty acid compositions of members of the genus Yersinia show percentages of cyclic C 17 : 0 higher than 10 % (Jantzen & Lassen, 1980;Whittaker et al, 2005;Tan et al, 2010;Nagarajan et al, 2005). The compositions of the isolate and B. aquatica DSM 5075…”

Evaluating the use of fatty acid profiles to identify deep-sea Vibrio isolates

“…GC-FID analysis of chemical components of bacterial cells has provided useful information for rapid detection and identification of bacteria in clinical and diagnostic bacteriology laboratories and currently has increased significance for both food safety and security (Daneshvar, Douglas, & Weyant, 2001;Whittaker, 2009;Whittaker, Day, Curtis, & Fry, 2007;Whittaker et al, 2005).…”

Use of Fatty Acid Methyl Ester Profiles for Discrimination ofBacillus cereusT-Strain Spores Grown on Different Media

“…FAME profiles are complex due to the high number of variables and the fact that the total dissimilarity among profiles may arise from unequal contributions from all the variables. Typically, data from every detected FAME marker are used to generate multivariate distance matrices (47) or functions representing linear combinations of the original variables (16,57), which are used to analyze dissimilarities among all profiles. For this study, FAME data were first analyzed in a similar manner by incorporating the relative proportion of every FAME marker identified by GC into the multivariate distances that were calculated for spore profiles.…”