A Stable Bioluminescent Construct of Escherichia Coli O157:H7 for Hazard Assessments of Long-term Survival in the Environment

Overview

Journal Appl Environ Microbiol

Specialties Environmental Health
Microbiology

Date 2003 Jun 6

PMID 12788737

Citations 10

Authors

Jennifer M Ritchie

Graeme R Campbell

Jill Shepherd

Yvonne Beaton

Davey Jones

Ken Killham

Rebekka R E Artz

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

A chromosomally lux-marked (Tn5 luxCDABE) strain of nontoxigenic Escherichia coli O157:H7 was constructed by transposon mutagenesis and shown to have retained the O157, H7, and intimin phenotypes. The survival characteristics of this strain in the experiments performed (soil at -5, -100, and -1,500 kPa matric potential and artificial groundwater) were indistinguishable from the wild-type strain. Evaluation of potential luminescence was found to be a rapid, cheap, and quantitative measure of viable E. coli O157:H7 Tn5 luxCDABE populations in environmental samples. In the survival studies, bioluminescence of the starved populations of E. coli O157:H7 Tn5 luxCDABE could be reactivated to the original levels of light emission, suggesting that these populations remain viable and potentially infective to humans. The attributes of the construct offer a cheap and low-risk substitute to the use of verocytotoxin-producing E. coli O157:H7 in long-term survival studies.

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