Interactions of Salmonella enterica subspecies enterica serovar Typhimurium with gut bacteria.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of the gut microbiota on the growth and survival of S. Typhimurium. This was tested in two-species co-cultures and in mixed cultures with a simplified gut model microbiota. Subsequently, interactions between S. Typhimurium and human faecal bacteria were quantified in both batch and continuous culture systems simulating the human colon. The exponential growth of S. Typhimurium was halted when the population of Escherichia coli reached the maximum population density in a two-compartment co-culture system where the two species were separated by a 0.45 µm pore membrane. Furthermore, the growth of some gut bacteria such as Lactobacillus gasseri and Bifidobacterium bifidum was inhibited by the presence of S. Typhimurium in the other compartment. The survival of S. Typhimurium was severely affected in mixed batch cultures with human faecal samples; a reduction of 10(3)-10(4) cfu/ml in the concentration of S. Typhimurium was observed in these cultures. However, no effect on S. Typhimurium survival was observed in mixed batch cultures with a simplified gut model microbiota under the same conditions. The effect of human faecal samples on S. Typhimurium in a three-stage continuous culture was different to that obtained in batch cultures; its growth rather than survival was affected under these conditions. S. Typhimurium growth was inhibited, and the bacterium was therefore eliminated by the continuous flow of the medium. Depending upon culturing conditions, the gut microbiota caused either growth inhibition, inactivation or did not affect S. Typhimurium.

Loss of culturability of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium upon cell-cell contact with human fecal bacteria.

Loss of culturability of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium has been observed in mixed cultures with anaerobic fecal bacteria under conditions that allow local interaction between cells, such as cell contact. A reduction of a population of culturable S. Typhimurium on the order of ∼10(4) to 10(5) CFU/ml was observed in batch anaerobic mixed cultures with fecal samples from different human donors. Culturability was not affected either in supernatants collected at several times from fecal cultures, when separated from fecal bacteria by a membrane of 0.45-µm pore size, or when in contact with inactivated fecal bacterial cells. Loss of culturability kinetics was characterized by a sharp reduction of several logarithmic units followed by a pronounced tail. A mathematical model was developed to describe the rate of loss of culturability as a function of the frequency of encounters between populations and the probability of inactivation after encounter. The model term F(S · F)(1/2) quantifies the effect of the concentration of both populations, fecal bacteria (F) and S. Typhimurium (S), on the loss of culturability of S. Typhimurium by cell contact with fecal bacteria. When the value of F(S · F)(1/2) decreased below ca. 10(15) (CFU/ml)(2), the frequency of encounters sharply decreased, leading to the deceleration of the inactivation rate and to the tailing off of the S. Typhimurium population. The probability of inactivation after encounter, P, was constant, with an estimated value of ∼10(-5) for all data sets. P might be characteristic of the mechanism of growth inhibition after a cell encounter.

Modelling Salmonella concentration throughout the pork supply chain by considering growth and survival in fluctuating conditions of temperature, pH and a(w).

We aim to predict the population density of Salmonella spp. through the pork supply chain under dynamic environmental conditions (pH, a(w) and temperature) that fluctuate from growth to survival/slow inactivation. To do this, the dependence of the probability of growth, and of the growth and inactivation rate on the temperature, pH and a(w) were modelled. Probabilistic and kinetic measurements, i.e. growth and survival curves, were collected from the ComBase database (www.combase.cc). Conditions at which selected data used to fit the models were generated covered wide ranges that are relevant to the pork supply chain. Probabilistic and kinetic models were combined to give predictions on the concentration of Salmonella spp. at any stage of the pork supply chain under fluctuating pH, a(w) and/or temperature. Models were implemented in a user-friendly computing tool freely available from http://www.ifr.ac.uk/safety/SalmonellaPredictions/. This program provides estimates on the population dynamics of Salmonella spp. at any stage of the pork supply chain and its predictive performance has been validated in several pork products.