Multispeciesbiofilm · Understanding of multispecies biofilms in the food industry is indispensible to control biofilm related food safety and quality issues

Understanding of multispecies biofilms in the food industry is indispensible to control biofilm related food safety and quality issues

The prevention of contamination with certain microbes in food processing industries is important for the safety and quality of food products. Cleaning and disinfection practices are mostly appropriately applied n food industries, but nevertheless, it seems that food contact surfaces like stainless steel are often laden with surface-adhered microbial communities termed biofilms. This is because not all food contact surfaces are in ideal condition or some places in the equipment, like dead ends, are difficult to clean. From time to time, this biofilm can disintegrate and release bacterial cells or enzymes and toxins which can contaminate the food product flowing past in the pipelines or on conveyor belts. As a result, biofilms in food industries can be responsible for food spoilage, process downtime, and reduced system efficiency of heat exchangers as a result of biofouling and corrosion of pipelines and tanks. It is important for the food industry to be able to prevent the formation of these biofilms or to effectively remove them during cleaning and disinfection. But also for society it is important to have a food system in which risks for deterioration of food quality or safety are still better managed. In these biofilms, a large diversity of bacterial species are present and they are protected from the environment with a special matrix which is produced by some of these bacteria. Bacterial species belonging to Pseudomonas, Microbacterium, Bacillus, Stenotrophomonas, Staphylococcus, and Streptococcus have been observed to be widely present as contaminants across diverse food processing industries after the cleaning and disinfection practices. Pathogens like Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella and Campylobacter can be present on these food contact surfaces too. It's the hypothesis that several of these bacteria work together in this biofilm through synergistic interactions making them more resilient and thus difficult to remove following cleaning and disinfection regimes. The overall objective of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie action Multispeciesbiofilm was to understand interspecies interactions in the biofilms formed by the dominant bacterial isolates of dairy, meat and egg processing industries, with more emphasis on dairy processing. Starting from a large number of possible combinations, we wanted to know which combinations of species (with a maximum of 4 species together) are most detrimental to form biofilms on stainless steel under conditions mimicking real life processing conditions. We wanted to explore how these specific multispecies combinations respond to routine industrial cleaning and disinfection using a lab model with stainless steel coupons. We used a combination of cutting edge technologies like metatranscriptome analysis to explore which genes are expressed, and confocal laser scanning electron microscopy to visualize the biofilm at structural levels. In addition, we investigated the possibility to implement a biosensing device for real-time monitoring of the formation of biofilms.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз