Transient plant production of Salmonella Typhimurium diagnostic antibodies

Kopertekh, Lilya; Meyer, Torsten; Freyer, Cornelia; Hust, Michael

Salmonella enterica, subspecies enterica serotype Typhimurium can infect both animals and humans and cause food-borne gastrointestinal infections, usually through poultry, beef, pork, milk and eggs. It can also be found in non-alcoholic beer or seafood. Human infections with phage type S. Typhimurium DT104 are particularly critical, because this strain is resistant to most of the commonly used antibiotics [1] . Therefore, continuous monitoring of bacterial food contamination is necessary to prevent infections in humans. Established methods for S. Typhimurium diagnostics are time-consuming and use microbiological cultures on different liquid and solid media [2] , specific fluorescence labeled DNA probes [3] or PCR [4] . Currently, high throughput diagnostics of S. Typhimurium is performed by indirect ELISA [5] . The commercially available ELISA kits, SALMOTYPE 1 -or Enterisol 1 -ELISA, use a mixture of O-antigens of Salmonella enterica subspecies enterica serovars. Because of this mixture, cross-reactions occur with other bacteria [6] . In addition, the sensitivity varies between the different ELISA assays [7] .