Faculty, Staff and Student Publications
Publication Date
10-1-2024
Journal
Environmental Microbiology Reports
Abstract
Dish sponges are known to support the proliferation of human bacterial pathogens, yet they are commonly used by consumers. Exposure to foodborne pathogens via sponge use may lead to illness, a serious concern among susceptible populations. The extent of exposure risks from sponge use has been limited by constraints associated with culture-independent or dependent methods for bacterial community characterization. Therefore, five used dish sponges were characterized to evaluate the presence of viable bacterial foodborne pathogens using the novel application of propidium monoazide (PMA) treatment and targeted 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Select pathogen viability was confirmed using targeted selective enrichment. The taxonomic abundance profiles of total and viable sponge microbiomes did not vary significantly. The numbers of unique bacterial species (p = 0.0465) and foodborne pathogens (p = 0.0102) identified were significantly lower in viable sponge microbiomes. Twenty unique bacterial foodborne pathogens were detected across total and viable sponge microbiomes, and three to six viable foodborne pathogens were identified in each sponge. Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus were identified in each viable sponge microbiome, and viable E. coli were recovered from two sponges via targeted selective enrichment. These findings suggest that sponge-associated bacterial communities are primarily viable and contain multiple viable bacterial foodborne pathogens.
Keywords
Azides, Propidium, Microbiota, Bacteria, RNA, Ribosomal, 16S, Microbial Viability, Humans, Food Microbiology, DNA, Bacterial, Household Articles
DOI
10.1111/1758-2229.70006
PMID
39440931
PMCID
PMC11497490
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
10-23-2024
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Post-print
Published Open-Access
yes
