Biocontrol and Rapid Detection of Food-Borne Pathogens Using Bacteriophages and Endolysins.
Bacteriophages have been suggested as natural food preservatives as well as rapid detection materials for food-borne pathogens in various foods. Since Listeria monocytogenes-targeting phage cocktail (ListShield) was approved for applications in foods, numerous phages have been screened and experimentally characterized for phage applications in foods. A single phage and phage cocktail treatments to various foods contaminated with food-borne pathogens including E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella enterica, Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Cronobacter sakazakii, and Vibrio spp. revealed that they have great potential to control various food-borne pathogens and may be alternative for conventional food preservatives. In addition, phage-derived endolysins with high host specificity and host lysis activities may be preferred to food applications rather than phages. For rapid detection of food-borne pathogens, cell-wall binding domains (CBDs) from endolysins have been suggested due to their high host-specific binding. Fluorescence-tagged CBDs have been successfully evaluated and suggested to be alternative materials of expensive antibodies for various detection applications. Most recently, reporter phage systems have been developed and tested to confirm their usability and accuracy for specific detection. These systems revealed some advantages like rapid detection of only viable pathogenic cells without interference by food components in a very short reaction time, suggesting that these systems may be suitable for monitoring of pathogens in foods. Consequently, phage is the next-generation biocontrol agent as well as rapid detection tool to confirm and even identify the food-borne pathogens present in various foods.
Department of Food and Animal Biotechnology, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Center for Food and Bioconvergence, Research Institute of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University Seoul, South Korea.
Jaewoo
J
Bai
Department of Food Science and Biotechnology and Institute of Life Science and Resources, Kyung Hee University Yongin, South Korea.
You-Tae
YT
Kim
Department of Food and Animal Biotechnology, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Center for Food and Bioconvergence, Research Institute of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National UniversitySeoul, South Korea; Institute of Food Industrialization, Institutes of Green Bio Science and Technology, Seoul National UniversityPyeongchang, South Korea.
Sangryeol
S
Ryu
Department of Food Science and Biotechnology and Institute of Life Science and Resources, Kyung Hee University Yongin, South Korea.
Ju-Hoon
JH
Lee
bacteriophage; biocontrol; cell-wall binding domain; endolysin; food preservatives; food-borne pathogens; rapid detection; reporter phage