Proteomics and Foodborne Pathogens

Abstract

Food is, along water and air, one of the essential requirements for maintaining human life. Food offers essential nutrients required for human growth and maintaining health. With continuously increasing population there is a growing need for adequate amount of food that will be nutritious, available, affordable and above all, safe for consumption. Considering that, regulation of the food quality and safety from field to table is needed with special attention for all critical points in that process. Nowadays food chains are becoming increasingly complex due to globalization, and maintaining food quality and food safety has become one of the most important roles of international and national regulatory agencies. Microbial contamination, including both live pathogens and their secreted toxic substances is the weakest link in food chain. Therefore, detection of pathogens and their toxic substances in food before it reaches final consumers is a task of great socio-economic and public health importance. Currently there is no “silver bullet” method which can fulfill all aspects of this important task. Most routinely used methods are simple microbiology assay tests, which remain the staple of current practice. Even relatively advanced detection assays in use allow screening only for expected microorganisms or toxins, leaving true preemptive measures as future goal. Among measures which posses this preemptive potential, proteomics based on mass spectrometry has shown to be sufficiently reliable for identification of foodborne pathogens. Its methods are robust, fast, cost effective and reproducible when standardized. In the last few decades development of this technology extended its uses and enabled it to become a routinely used and in some cases preferred method for pathogen identification in clinical settings, being also adopted in food industry.