Metagenomic Approach to Identifying Foodborne Pathogens on Chinese Cabbage

• Published in: Journal of microbiology and biotechnology Vol. 28; no. 2; pp. 227 - 235
• Main Authors: Kim, Daeho, Hong, Sanghyun, Kim, You-Tae, Ryu, Sangryeol, Kim, Hyeun Bum, Lee, Ju-Hoon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Korea (South) 한국미생물·생명공학회 28.02.2018
• Subjects: 생물학; bacterial diversity; foodborne illness; Chinese cabbage; Phyllosphere; 16S rRNA gene
• ISSN: 1017-7825; 1738-8872
• DOI: 10.4014/jmb.1710.10021

Foodborne illness represents a major threat to public health and is frequently attributed to pathogenic microorganisms on fresh produce. Recurrent outbreaks often come from vegetables that are grown close to or within the ground. Therefore, the first step to understanding the public health risk of microorganisms on fresh vegetables is to identify and describe microbial communities. We investigated the phyllospheres on Chinese cabbage ( subsp. , = 54). 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing targeting the V5-V6 region of 16S rRNA genes was conducted by employing the Illumina MiSeq system. Sequence quality was assessed, and phylogenetic assessments were performed using the RDP classifier implemented in QIIME with a bootstrap cutoff of 80%. Principal coordinate analysis was performed using a weighted Fast UniFrac matrix. The average number of sequence reads generated per sample was 34,584. At the phylum level, bacterial communities were composed primarily of Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes. The most abundant genera on Chinese cabbages were , and . Diverse potential pathogens, such as , and were also detected from the samples. Although further epidemiological studies will be required to determine whether the detected potential pathogens are associated with foodborne illness, our results imply that a metagenomic approach can be used to detect pathogenic bacteria on fresh vegetables.