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Experimental Infection with Listeria monocytogenes as a Model for Studying Host Interferon-γ Responses
Published on: November 16, 2016
Modelling the growth, survival and death of Listeria monocytogenes
J M Membré1, J Thurette, M Catteau
1Laboratoire de Génie des Procédés et de Technologie Alimentaires, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France. membre@lille.inra.fr
Abstract:
In this paper, the predictive microbiology approach has been generalized to the study of growth, survival and death of Listeria monocytogenes. As this micro-organism is involved in food poisoning, its growth, survival and death were studied as functions of low temperatures, NaCl and phenol compounds, in a synthetic medium, by a factorially designed experiment. A significant inactivation of L. monocytogenes was obtained with 20 ppm of phenol and 4% (w/v) NaCl at temperatures from 4 to 12 degrees C. An empirical model is proposed to describe, in a single step, the biomass profile vs studied factors. Thereby, the influence of temperature, NaCl and phenol concentration on L. monocytogenes biomass quantity (0.5-8 log cfu ml(-1)) are presented as a function of storage duration. The comparisons of the proposed model with existing models (Gompertz for growth, vitalistic for survival and death) were performed. The use of a single equation allows the prediction of contamination levels in all experimental conditions without knowledge a priori. The model offers considerable prospects for its use in food microbiology.
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