Luminex(®) multiplex bead suspension arrays for the detection and serotyping of Salmonella spp

In this chapter we describe two commercially available bead-based molecular assays for detection, identification and serotyping of Salmonella. The xTAG(®) Gastrointestinal Pathogen Panel (GPP) is a qualitative multiplex test for the simultaneous detection of nucleic acids from Salmonella plus 14 other gastroenteritis-causing bacteria, viruses, and parasites from stool specimens. xTAG GPP uses the Luminex(®) xTAG universal array technology for the identification of specific target sequences combined with the xMAP(®) bead multiplexing platform for detection of the targets that were present in the starting sample. The xMAP Salmonella Serotyping Assay (SSA) is a multiplex nucleic acid-based direct hybridization assay for molecular identification of the serotype of Salmonella isolates. In xMAP SSA, target sequences amplified from cultured Salmonella isolates are captured by hybridization to sequence-specific capture probes which have been coupled to the multiplexed bead sets. Herein we provide detailed protocols for each of these assays and present data which describe their performance characteristics for detection and serotyping Salmonella.