Citrobacter braakii Isolated from Salami and Soft Cheese: An Emerging Food Safety Hazard?

Citrobacter braakii can colonize the intestinal tract of humans and animals and occasionally act as opportunistic pathogen. Although isolated from food and the environment, its potential as a foodborne pathogen remains uncertain. Twenty C. braakii isolates were previously collected from salami and soft cheese artisanal productions. In the present study, the potentialities of C. braakii as a food safety hazard were explored by a genomic comparison of C. braakii newly sequenced genomes with publicly available genomes, including those of clinical relevance, and a pathogenicity assessment in Galleria mellonella as an in vivo infection model. Phylogenomic reconstruction revealed that one salami clone and two C. braakii genomes of the soft cheese production were closely related (from 11 to 28 core SNP differences) to C. braakii publicly available clinical genomes. All genomes carried the chromosomally located bla_CMY and/or qnrB genes and were resistant to cephalosporins and/or had reduced susceptibility to ciprofloxacin. G. mellonella larvae showed 90% mortality after challenge with C. braakii strains carrying the vex and tvi operons coding for the capsular polysaccharide (Vi antigen), in comparison to 40% of strains lacking these two operons. The high mortality rate of vex- and tvi-positive C. braakii isolated from food processing plants suggests C. braakii to be a possible foodborne hazard.