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A rapid method for screening for Salmonella typhimurium in a chicken cecal microbial consortium using gene
S D Pillai1, S C Ricke, D J Nisbet
1Environmental Science Program, Texas A&M University Research Center, El Paso 79927.
Abstract:
A rapid sample processing method has been developed to detect low numbers of Salmonella typhimurium in a chicken cecal microbial consortium. Using phoP-specific primers under stringent amplification conditions and gene probe analysis, fewer than 100 colony-forming units (CFUs) were detectable when pure cultures were employed. When the polymerase chain reaction assay was run on cecal contents from birds infected with S. typhimurium, only positive cecal samples containing as few as 700 CFUs reacted to the assay, and the negative bird samples reacted only when the samples were spiked with S. typhimurium cells. The method employed for sample processing is simple and provides a sensitive means of detecting S. typhimurium-specific sequences in trace amounts in the presence of mixed chicken cecal microbial populations.