Výskumný ústav potravinársky

Rešková, Z. – Andrezál, M. – Drahovská, H. – Szemes, T. – Kuchta, T.
Molecular characterization of Escherichia coli isolated from hemp seeds


Zuzana Rešková, Department of Microbiology, Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Food Research Institute, National Agricultural and Food Centre, Priemyselná 4, P. O. Box 31, SK-82475 Bratislava 25, Slovakia. E-mail: zuzana.reskova@nppc.sk

Original article
Received 28 February 2023; 1st revised 9 May 2023; accepted 9 May 2023; published online 17 May 2023.

Súhrn: Hemp seeds are increasingly produced on small farms in Slovakia and used for production of food. We detected contamination of 1.4 × 10⁷ CFU·g^-1 coliform bacteria in hemp seeds from a small farm and isolated three strains of Escherichia coli. These were characterized by GTG-typing and by whole genome sequencing. The three strains were indistinguishable from each other by GTG-typing but different from a reference strain E. coli CCM 2024. They were not distinguished either by multi-locus sequence type (MLST) deduced from whole genome sequences, as all strains were of sequence type 58, or by core genome-based MLST (cgMLST), as all strains belonged to type 148521. All strains were found to be fumC4/fimH32 type and serotype H21, O-antigen was not identified. No plasmid origin was detected. No gene encoding for shiga toxin was detected. Several virulence-associated genes were detected in all three strains at high identities with sequences in the database, namely, fimH, lpfA, terC, csgA, hlyE, nlpI, yehB, yehC and yehD. Further virulence-associated genes were detected at shorter lengths, namely, fdeC, gad and yehA. Several antibiotic resistance genes were also identified. The strains were found to be virtually identical. With a probability of being a human pathogen, they need to be addressed for on-farm food production safety.

Kľúčové slová: hemp; Escherichia coli; high-throughput sequencing; DNA; virulence; safety

Na stiahnutie:
  jfnr-2023-2-pp177-182-reskova.pdf (PDF, 338.98 Kb, 152x)