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Molecular Methods in Food Quality and Microbiological Safety Volume II
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Molecular Methods in Food Quality and Microbiological Safety Volume II

A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Food Microbiology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 21 October 2024 | Viewed by 3202

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Youqiang Xu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Food and Health, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing 100048, China
Interests: food microbiology; molecular methods; fermented food; flavor
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Yu Zheng

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Biotechnology, Tianjin University of Science & Technology, Tianjin 300453, China
Interests: Chinese cereal vinegar; microbial metabolism; bioaugmentation; solid-state fermentation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Microorganisms serve as an important tool in food processing. For example, the community and metabolism of microorganisms in fermented food are closely related to the quality of food products. Meanwhile, there is a dual effect of microorganisms on food processing. Microbial contamination is one of the severe challenges faced in food processing. How to accurately reveal microbial functions and detect food pathogens have become two important issues in food processing. The development of molecular methods provides important tools for detecting food pathogens or revealing the dynamic changing and possible metabolic mechanisms of microorganisms in food processing, such as omics technologies (e.g., genomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics), providing useful tools for analyzing the correlation between microbial metabolism and flavor formation in complex microbial fermentation eco-systems. The development of specific molecular detecting technologies, such as nuclear acid detection methods, offers a fast and convenient way to detect target microorganisms in food processing. This Special Issue mainly seeks to include recent studies on the molecular mechanisms of the microbial transformation of raw materials and the generation of flavor substances in food processing, and new methods or technologies which can accurately detect specific microorganisms in different kinds of food processing. The goal of this Special Issue is to provide a reference for revealing the effects of microorganisms on food processing on product quality and safety.

Dr. Youqiang Xu
Prof. Dr. Yu Zheng
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Foods is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • high-throughput sequencing
  • genomics
  • transcriptomics
  • metabolomics
  • microbiology
  • flavor and food quality
  • fermented food
  • food pathogens
  • manufacturing process
  • metabolic mechanism

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

8 pages, 1246 KiB  
Communication
Bacterial Metabarcoding of Raw Palm Sap Samples from Bangladesh with Nanopore Sequencing
by Ágota Ábrahám, Md. Nurul Islam, Zoltán Gazdag, Shahneaz Ali Khan, Sharmin Chowdhury, Gábor Kemenesi and Sazeda Akter
Foods 2024, 13(9), 1285; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods13091285 - 23 Apr 2024
Viewed by 412
Abstract
The traditional practice of harvesting and processing raw date palm sap is not only culturally significant but also provides an essential nutritional source in South Asia. However, the potential for bacterial or viral contamination from animals and environmental sources during its collection remains [...] Read more.
The traditional practice of harvesting and processing raw date palm sap is not only culturally significant but also provides an essential nutritional source in South Asia. However, the potential for bacterial or viral contamination from animals and environmental sources during its collection remains a serious and insufficiently studied risk. Implementing improved food safety measures and collection techniques could mitigate the risk of these infections. Additionally, the adoption of advanced food analytical methods offers the potential to identify pathogens and uncover the natural bacterial diversity of these products. The advancement of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, particularly nanopore sequencing, offers a rapid and highly mobile solution. In this study, we employed nanopore sequencing for the bacterial metabarcoding of a set of raw date palm sap samples collected without protective coverage against animals in Bangladesh in 2021. We identified several bacterial species with importance in the natural fermentation of the product and demonstrated the feasibility of this NGS method in the surveillance of raw palm sap products. We revealed two fermentation directions dominated by either Leuconostoc species or Lactococcus species in these products at the first 6 h from harvest, along with opportunistic human pathogens in the background, represented with lower abundance. Plant pathogens, bacteria with the potential for opportunistic human infection and the sequences of the Exiguobacterium genus are also described, and their potential role is discussed. In this study, we demonstrate the potential of mobile laboratory solutions for food safety purposes in low-resource areas. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Molecular Methods in Food Quality and Microbiological Safety Volume II)
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11 pages, 1063 KiB  
Article
Improving the Efficiency of Viability-qPCR with Lactic Acid Enhancer for the Selective Detection of Live Pathogens in Foods
by Laura-Dorina Dinu, Quthama Jasim Al-Zaidi, Adelina Georgiana Matache and Florentina Matei
Foods 2024, 13(7), 1021; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods13071021 - 27 Mar 2024
Viewed by 635
Abstract
Pathogenic Escherichia coli are the most prevalent foodborne bacteria, and their accurate detection in food samples is critical for ensuring food safety. Therefore, a quick technique named viability-qPCR (v-qPCR), which is based on the ability of a selective dye, such as propidium monoazide [...] Read more.
Pathogenic Escherichia coli are the most prevalent foodborne bacteria, and their accurate detection in food samples is critical for ensuring food safety. Therefore, a quick technique named viability-qPCR (v-qPCR), which is based on the ability of a selective dye, such as propidium monoazide (PMA), to differentiate between alive and dead cells, has been developed. Despite diverse, successful applications, v-qPCR is impaired by some practical limitations, including the ability of PMA to penetrate the outer membrane of dead Gram-negative bacteria. The objective of this study is to evaluate the ability of lactic acid (LA) to improve PMA penetration and, thus, the efficiency of v-qPCR in detecting the live fraction of pathogens. The pre-treatment of E. coli ATCC 8739 cells with 10 mM LA greatly increased PMA penetration into dead cells compared to conventional PMA-qPCR assay, avoiding false positive results. The limit of detection when using LA-PMA qPCR is 1% viable cells in a mixture of dead and alive cells. The optimized LA-PMA qPCR method was reliably able to detect log 2 CFU/mL culturable E. coli in milk spiked with viable and non-viable bacteria. Lactic acid is cheap, has low toxicity, and can be used to improve the efficiency of the v-qPCR assay, which is economically interesting for larger-scale pathogen detection applications intended for food matrices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Molecular Methods in Food Quality and Microbiological Safety Volume II)
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16 pages, 2894 KiB  
Article
The Rapid Detection of Salmonella enterica, Listeria monocytogenes, and Staphylococcus aureus via Polymerase Chain Reaction Combined with Magnetic Beads and Capillary Electrophoresis
by Nodali Ndraha, Hung-Yun Lin, Shou-Kuan Tsai, Hsin-I Hsiao and Han-Jia Lin
Foods 2023, 12(21), 3895; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods12213895 - 24 Oct 2023
Viewed by 1918
Abstract
Food safety concerns regarding foodborne pathogen contamination have gained global attention due to its significant implications. In this study, we developed a detection system utilizing a PCR array combined with an automated magnetic bead-based system and CE technology to enable the detection of [...] Read more.
Food safety concerns regarding foodborne pathogen contamination have gained global attention due to its significant implications. In this study, we developed a detection system utilizing a PCR array combined with an automated magnetic bead-based system and CE technology to enable the detection of three foodborne pathogens, namely Salmonella enterica, Listeria monocytogenes, and Staphylococcus aureus. The results showed that our developed method could detect these pathogens at concentrations as low as 7.3 × 101, 6.7 × 102, and 6.9 × 102 cfu/mL, respectively, in the broth samples. In chicken samples, the limit of detection for these pathogens was 3.1 × 104, 3.5 × 103, and 3.9 × 102 cfu/g, respectively. The detection of these pathogens was accomplished without the necessity for sample enrichment, and the entire protocols, from sample preparation to amplicon analysis, were completed in approximately 3.5 h. Regarding the impact of the extraction method on detection capability, our study observed that an automated DNA extraction system based on the magnetic bead method demonstrated a 10-fold improvement or, at the very least, yielded similar results compared to the column-based method. These findings demonstrated that our developed model is effective in detecting low levels of these pathogens in the samples analyzed in this study. The PCR-CE method developed in this study may help monitor food safety in the future. It may also be extended to identify other foodborne pathogens across a wide range of food samples. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Molecular Methods in Food Quality and Microbiological Safety Volume II)
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