Browsing by Author "Toivanen, Laura"

Listeria monocytogenes is an important food-borne pathogen. It is a gram-positive bacterium, which multiplies in both aerobic and anaerobic conditions at a wide temperature area. It can grow in vacuum and modified atmosphere packages in refrigerated temperatures causing food hygienic risk. Listeria monocytogenes can cause life-threatening infection particularly in individuals who are immunocompromised, pregnant and elderly. The disease is divided into invasive and non-invasive form. The disease manifests typically with septicaemia, meningitis and gastroenteritis in non-invasive form. L. monocytogenes exists widely in the environment such as soil and water. It can find its way from the environment to the food processing plants and cause so called persistent contamination in the plant. The persistent contamination is a sum of many factors. Bacterial adhesion, acid and heat tolerance, the failure of disinfection, the adaptation of bacteria to sanitizing agents, complex processing machines and the existence of compartmentalization has its own role. Listeria monocytogenes strains can be divided into persistent and non-persistent strains. The persistent strains adhere to stainless steel surfaces faster than non-persistent strains. After the adhesion bacteria produce exopolysaccarides around themselves creating a biofilm. There are several methods to investigate biofilms. These methods can be divided into direct and indirect methods. In direct methods the biofilm is observed directly with microscope. The indirect methods are often colorimetric in other words the adherent bacteria are stained and the amount of colour is measured to estimate the amount of biofilm. The aim of the study was to set up a microtiter plate method to examine the adhesion of L. monocytogenes. At the same time the adhesion of persistent and non-persistent L. monocytogenes strains was compared. There were 20 L. monocytogenes strains that were isolated from food processing plants. The test was repeated 2 or 3 times. In the method which was used in this study the strain was incubated in the suspension in the microtiter plate. The adhered cells were stained and then the colour was dissolved. The optical density of the suspension was measured. The higher the optical density of the suspension was, the more there were adhered bacteria. Part of the studied strains had statistically significant difference in the adhesion. However most of the strains did not have a significant difference in adhesion. There was not statistically significant difference in the adhesion of persistent and non-persistent strains. The microtiter plate method proved to be a practical method to examine the biofilm of L. monocytogenes but its repeatability should still be improved. Differences in the adhesion of strains were observed with the method. Many strains can be examined at the same time with the method. The method is also easily modified to different research conditions.