Transcriptomic Responses of Salmonella enterica Serovars Enteritidis and Typhimurium to Chlorine-Based Oxidative Stress

Abstract

Salmonella enterica serovars Enteritidis and Typhimurium are the leading causative agents of salmonellosis in the United States. S. Enteritidis is predominantly associated with contamination of shell eggs and egg products, whereas S. Typhimurium is frequently linked to tainted poultry meats, fresh produce, and recently, peanut-based products. Chlorine is an oxidative disinfectant commonly used in the food industry to sanitize the surfaces of foods and food processing facilities (e.g., shell eggs and poultry meats). However, chlorine disinfection is not always effective, as some S. enterica strains may resist and survive the disinfection process. To date, little is known about the underlying mechanisms of how S. enterica responds to chlorine-based oxidative stress. In this study, we designed a custom bigenome microarray that consists of 385,000 60-mer oligonucleotide probes and targets 4,793 unique gene features in the genomes of S. Enteritidis strain PT4 and S. Typhimurium strain LT2. We explored the transcriptomic responses of both strains to two different chlorine treatments (130 ppm of chlorine for 30 min and 390 ppm of chlorine for 10 min) in brain heart infusion broth. We identified 209 S. enterica core genes associated with Fe-S cluster assembly, cysteine biosynthesis, stress response, ribosome formation, biofilm formation, and energy metabolism that were differentially expressed (>1.5-fold; P < 0.05). In addition, we found that serovars Enteriditis and Typhimurium differed in the responses of 33 stress-related genes and 19 virulence-associated genes to the chlorine stress. Findings from this study suggest that the oxidative-stress response may render S. enterica resistant or susceptible to certain types of environmental stresses, which in turn promotes the development of more effective hurdle interventions to reduce the risk of S. enterica contamination in the food supply.