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Cultivation and sequencing-free protocol for Serratia marcescens detection and typing

Alessandro Alvaro1,2, Aurora Piazza3, Stella Papaleo1

  • 1Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Pediatric Clinical Research Center "Romeo and Enrica Invernizzi", University of Milan, 20157 Milan, Italy.

Iscience
|March 21, 2024
PubMed

Insights

A new fast method detects Serratia marcescens, an opportunistic pathogen causing hospital outbreaks. This cultivation-free protocol quickly identifies infectious clones, aiding rapid clinical and environmental surveillance.

Area of Science:

  • Microbiology
  • Infectious Diseases
  • Genomics

Background:

  • Serratia marcescens is an opportunistic pathogen causing outbreaks, especially in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs).
  • Nosocomial infections are often linked to a specific infectious clone of S. marcescens.
  • Whole genome sequencing (WGS) identifies this clone but is time-consuming.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To develop a rapid, cultivation-free method for detecting and typing Serratia marcescens.
  • To specifically identify the infectious clone responsible for nosocomial infections.
  • To provide a portable and cost-effective alternative to WGS for S. marcescens surveillance.

Main Methods:

  • Development of a cultivation-free hypervariable-locus melting typing (HLMT) protocol.
  • Testing the protocol's detection capability on mixed samples and its limit of detection.
  • Comparative analysis of HLMT against WGS for identifying the S. marcescens infectious clone.

Main Results:

  • The HLMT protocol achieved 100% detection capability on mixed samples.
  • The limit of detection reached as low as 10 genome copies.
  • HLMT identified the S. marcescens infectious clone with 97% specificity and 96% sensitivity compared to WGS.

Conclusions:

  • The HLMT protocol offers a fast, cost-effective, and portable method for S. marcescens detection and typing.
  • This method is suitable for large-scale environmental and clinical surveillance, including in resource-limited settings.
  • HLMT provides rapid results, crucial for controlling outbreaks of this opportunistic pathogen.
Keywords:
Biological sciencesBiological sciences research methodologiesEnvironmental BiotechnologyMicrobiology

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