Monitoring transmission routes of Listeria spp. in smoked salmon production with repetitive element sequence-based PCR techniques.

Abstract

Various techniques have been used for tracing the transmission routes of Listeria species and for the assessment of hygiene standards in food processing plants. The potential of repetitive element sequence-based PCR (Rep-PCR) methods (GTG₅ and REPI + II) for the typing of Listeria isolates (n = 116), including Listeria monocytogenes (n = 46), was evaluated in a particular situation arising from the relocation of a company producing cold-smoked salmon. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) using three restriction enzymes (ApaI, AscI, and SmaI) was used for comparison. Identical transmission scenarios among two companies could be identified by cluster analysis of L. monocytogenes isolates that were indistinguishable by both Rep-PCR and PFGE. The calculated diversity index (DI) indicates that Rep-PCR subtyping of Listeria species with primer sets GTG₅ and REPI + II has a lower discrimination power than does PFGE. When concatenated Rep-PCR cluster analysis was used, the DI increased from 0.934 (REPI + II) and 0.923 (GTG₅) to 0.956. The discrimination power of this method was similar to that of PFGE typing based on restriction enzyme Apa I (DI = 0.955). Listeria welshimeri may be useful as an indicator for monitoring smoked salmon processing environments. Rep-PCR meets the expectations of a reasonable, fast, and low-cost molecular subtyping method for the routine monitoring of Listeria species. The discriminatory power as characterized by the DI sufficiently quantifies the probability of unrelated isolates being characterized as different subtypes. Therefore, Rep-PCR typing based on two primer systems (GTG₅ and REPI + II) may be a useful tool for monitoring industrial hygiene.