Rapid and simultaneous quantification of viable Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella spp. in milk through multiplex real-time PCR

Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella spp. in milk are 2 common pathogens that cause foodborne diseases. An accurate, rapid, specific method has been developed for the simultaneous detection of viable E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella spp. in milk. Two specific genes, namely, fliC from E. coli O157:H7 and invA from Salmonella spp., were selected to design primers and probes. A combined treatment containing sodium deoxycholate (SDO) and propidium monoazide (PMA) was applied to detect viable E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella spp. only. Traditional culture methods and SDO-PMA-multiplex real-time (mRT) PCR assay were applied to determine the number of viable E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella spp. in cell suspensions with different proportions of dead cells. These methods revealed consistent findings regarding the detected viable cells. The detection limit of the SDO-PMA-mRT-PCR assay reached 102 cfu/mL for Salmonella spp. and 102 cfu/mL for E. coli O157:H7 in milk. The detection limit of SDO-PMA-mRT-PCR for E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella spp. in milk was significantly similar even in the presence of 106 cfu/mL of 2 nontarget bacteria. The proposed SDO-PMA-mRT-PCR assay is a potential approach for the accurate and sensitive detection of viable E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella spp. in milk.