Lots of hard work by @ae_mather, Raphaёlle Palau, Nicol Janecko and Craig Baker-Austin and others at @TheQuadram, with grateful acknowledgement of funding from @BBSRC and @foodgov.

How is AMR able to spread? Vibrio has an arsenal of mobile genetic elements associated with AMR genes: 25% were found on plasmids, 52% were associated with insertion sequences, and similar AMR gene-containing chromosomal regions were found amongst different Vibrio species.

What about antimicrobial resistance? 78% of Vibrio isolates contained AMR genes, but these isolates were only isolated from aquacultured prawn and salmon samples.

Were any of the Vibrio pathogenic to humans? Potentially - and these were only isolated from aquaculture prawn samples.

What is the prevalence of Vibrio on seafood? Vibrio was found on 49% of prawn and 2.5% of salmon samples, but a larger percentage of aquacultured prawns samples were positive for Vibrio (57%) compared to wild-caught prawns (9.8%).

Seafood can be wild-caught or aquacultured, but do these methods expose us to dangerous bacteria? In our paper published in Food Microbiology, we used genomics to investigate the Vibrio collected from seafood produced using different methods.

RT @MicrobioSoc: Check out our latest blog from @BloomfieldMicro at @TheQuadram about their ublication in #MGen where they investigated usi….

Lots of hard work by @ae_mather, Falk Hildebrand, @aldertzomer, Raphaёlle Palau and others at @TheQuadram, with grateful acknowledgement of funding from @BBSRC and @foodgov.

Do metagenomes differ amongst different types of food? Certain microorganisms, metabolic pathways and AMR genes were associated with specific food commodities, e.g., pectin degradation was associated with leafy greens.

What about antimicrobial resistance? Using long-read metagenomics, we predicted the origin of 59% of AMR genes that were mostly associated with Aeromonas, Shewanella and Acinetobacter. However, determining the mobility of AMR genes remains a challenge.

Could the presence of specific pathogens be identified in food metagenome data? 6-100% of each pathogen’s genome could be identified in the associated food metagenome. Pathogen enrichment or bait capture would be required for more consistent identification.

What is the concentration of pathogens on food? On most food samples, pathogens made up <10% of the microorganisms. Instead, food was predominated by psychrotrophic bacteria that can replicate in the cool temperature food is stored, e.g., Pseudomonas and Acinetobacter.

Food metagenomics is an emerging field, but can it be used for food surveillance? In our paper published in Microbial Genomics, we compared the metagenomes of food to the genomes of pathogens collected from the same samples to test its effectiveness.

RT @DziegielAgata: Excited to share that the first paper from my PhD research investigating Campylobacter diversity on retail chicken has j….

RT @TheQuadram: 🆕 Blog! Dr Samuel Bloomfield (@BloomfieldMicro) explains how Quadram Institute researchers are exploring the food safety ri….

RT @TheQuadram: 🆕 Genomics reveals potential underappreciated threat to food safety. Yersinia enterocolitica bacteria may be an underappre….

Lots of hard work by @ae_mather, Raphaëlle Palau, @emmaraholden, @ma_webber and others at @TheQuadram, with grateful acknowledgement of funding from @BBSRC, @MesResFnd and @foodgov.

Were the food P. aeruginosa dangerous? All P. aeruginosa isolates contained multiple antimicrobial resistance genes, displayed virulence and a quarter of strains had been seen in human infections. The burden of food to P. aeruginosa infections should be evaluated more closely.

What about the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa? P. aeruginosa required additional enrichment steps to isolate them from food and were found on 11% of food samples.

How common is Pseudomonas on food? 88% of retail food samples were positive for Pseudomonas, but the isolates were not clinically significant and contained no antimicrobial resistance genes and are most likely involved in food spoilage.