Foodborne intoxications caused by the consumption of fish and other products of marine origin contaminated with bacterial pathogens are an ever-present threat, either due to bacteria and/or its metabolites. In addition, the rapid spoilage of seafood due to microbial activity, results in high economic losses. The development of the microbiota in seafood products depends on the microbiological ambience of capture, processing and storage, and the applied preservation method. Thus, pathogenic and spoilage bacterial species in seafood may come from the indigenous microbiota of the aquatic ambience or are introduced by contamination during processing. Rapid and accurate bacterial species identification is essential for an effective control program to ensure safety and quality of either processed or minimally processed seafood. In the present work, matrix-assisted laser desorption ionizationtime of flight mass spectrometry was successfully applied to identify 26 bacterial strains isolated from fresh fish and processed seafood samples. The approach was based on the comparison of unknown spectra to a reference spectral library and demonstrated to be a fast and accurate technique for bacterial species differentiation, which can be used for the rapid identification of foodborne pathogens and spoilage bacteria potentially present in products of marine origin.

This work was funded by the PGIDIT Research Program (Project PGIDIT06PXIB261164PR) of the Xunta de Galicia (Galician Council for Industry Commerce and Innovation). The work of K. Bohme and I.C. Fernandez-No is supported by a “Maria Barbeito” and “Lucas Labrada” research contract from Xunta de Galicia.

12 páginas, 4 figuras, 3 tablas.-- The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com

Peer reviewed