Antonio Foddai

Maximizing Capture Efficiency and Specificity of Magnetic Separation for Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis Cells

ABSTRACT In order to introduce specificity for Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis prior to a phage amplification assay, various magnetic-separation approaches, involving either antibodies or peptides, were evaluated in terms of the efficiency of capture (expressed as a percentage) of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis cells and the percentage of nonspecific binding by other Mycobacterium spp. A 50:50 mixture of MyOne Tosylactivated Dynabeads coated with the chemically synthesized M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis-specific peptides biotinylated aMp3 and biotinylated aMptD (i.e., peptide-mediated magnetic separation [PMS]) proved to be the best magnetic-separation approach for achieving 85 to 100% capture of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis and minimal (<1%) nonspecific recovery of other Mycobacterium spp. (particularly if beads were blocked with 1% skim milk before use) from broth samples containing 103 to 104 CFU/ml. When PMS was coupled with a recently optimized phage amplification assay and used to detect M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis in 50-ml volumes of spiked milk, the mean 50% limit of detection (LOD50) was 14.4 PFU/50 ml of milk (equivalent to 0.3 PFU/ml). This PMS-phage assay represents a novel, rapid method for the detection and enumeration of viable M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis organisms in milk, and potentially other sample matrices, with results available within 48 h.

Optimization of a phage amplification assay to permit accurate enumeration of viable Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis cells.

ABSTRACT A commercially available phage amplification assay, FASTPlaqueTB (Biotec Laboratories, Ipswich, United Kingdom), when used according to the manufacturers instructions, does not permit accurate enumeration of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis. The aim of this study was to optimize the phage amplification assay conditions to permit accurate quantification of viable M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis cells. The burst time for M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis was initially determined to inform decisions about optimal incubation time before plating, and then other test parameters were altered to evaluate how the correlation between plaque and colony counts was affected. The D29 mycobacteriophage replicates more slowly in M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis than in Mycobacterium smegmatis (used to optimize the commercial test originally), and the mean burst time for four M. avium subsp. paratuberulosis strains was 210 ± 36.8 min at 37°C compared to 63 ± 17.5 min for M. smegmatis mc2 155. To achieve 100% correlation between plaque and colony counts, the optimized phage assay includes the following: (i) resuspension of the samples to be tested in Middlebrook 7H9 broth containing 10% oleic acid-albumin-dextrose-catalase and 2 mM calcium chloride, followed by overnight incubation at 37°C before performance of the phage assay; (ii) a 2-h incubation of the sample with D29 mycobacteriophage before viricide treatment; and (iii) a further 90-min incubation after viricide treatment and neutralization up to the burst time (total incubation time, 210 min) before plating with M. smegmatis mc2 155 in 7H9 agar. The optimized phage amplification assay was able to detect 1 to 10 CFU/ml of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis in spiked milk or broth within 48 h, as demonstrated by the results of several blind trials.

Application of a Peptide-Mediated Magnetic Separation-Phage Assay for Detection of Viable Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis to Bovine Bulk Tank Milk and Feces Samples

ABSTRACT Naturally contaminated bovine bulk tank milk (n = 44) and feces (n = 39) were tested for the presence of viable Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis by a novel peptide-mediated magnetic separation-phage (PMS-phage) assay. Counts of viable M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis cells ranging from 1 to 110 PFU/50 ml of milk and 6 to 41,111 PFU/g of feces were indicated by the PMS-phage assay.

Rapid Assessment of the Viability of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis Cells after Heat Treatment, Using an Optimized Phage Amplification Assay

ABSTRACT Thermal inactivation experiments were carried out to assess the utility of a recently optimized phage amplification assay to accurately enumerate viable Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis cells in milk. Ultra-heat-treated (UHT) whole milk was spiked with large numbers of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis organisms (106 to 107 CFU/ml) and dispensed in 100-μl aliquots in thin-walled 200-μl PCR tubes. A Primus 96 advanced thermal cycler (Peqlab, Erlangen, Germany) was used to achieve the following time and temperature treatments: (i) 63°C for 3, 6, and 9 min; (ii) 68°C for 20, 40, and 60 s; and (iii) 72°C for 5, 10, 15, and 25 s. After thermal stress, the number of surviving M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis cells was assessed by both phage amplification assay and culture on Herrolds egg yolk medium (HEYM). A high correlation between PFU/ml and CFU/ml counts was observed for both unheated (r2 = 0.943) and heated (r2 = 0.971) M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis cells. D and z values obtained using the two types of counts were not significantly different (P > 0.05). The D68°C, mean D63°C, and D72°C for four M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis strains were 81.8, 9.8, and 4.2 s, respectively, yielding a mean z value of 6.9°C. Complete inactivation of 106 to 107 CFU of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis/ml milk was not observed for any of the time-temperature combinations studied; 5.2- to 6.6-log10 reductions in numbers were achieved depending on the temperature and time. Nonlinear thermal inactivation kinetics were consistently observed for this bacterium. This study confirms that the optimized phage assay can be employed in place of conventional culture on HEYM to speed up the acquisition of results (48 h instead of a minimum of 6 weeks) for inactivation experiments involving M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis-spiked samples.

Development of a novel phage-mediated immunoassay for the rapid detection of viable Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis

The objective of this study was to develop a novel screening method for detection of viable Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (Map) in milk and faeces, as a rapid alternative to Map culture.

Development of a specific immunomagnetic capture-PCR for rapid detection of viable Mycoplasma agalactiae in sheep milk samples

To develop an immunomagnetic capture (IMC) to detect viable Mycoplasma agalactiae in routine ovine milk samples.

Viable Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis isolated from calf milk replacer

When advising farmers on how to control Johnes disease in an infected herd, one of the main recommendations is to avoid feeding waste milk to calves and instead feed calf milk replacer (CMR). This advice is based on the assumption that CMR is free of viable Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis (MAP) cells, an assumption that has not previously been challenged. We tested commercial CMR products (n = 83) obtained from dairy farms around the United States by the peptide-mediated magnetic separation (PMS)-phage assay, PMS followed by liquid culture (PMS-culture), and direct IS900 quantitative PCR (qPCR). Conventional microbiological analyses for total mesophilic bacterial counts, coliforms, Salmonella, coagulase-negative staphylococci, streptococci, nonhemolytic Corynebacterium spp., and Bacillus spp. were also performed to assess the overall microbiological quality of the CMR. Twenty-six (31.3%) of the 83 CMR samples showed evidence of the presence of MAP. Seventeen (20.5%) tested positive for viable MAP by the PMS-phage assay, with plaque counts ranging from 6 to 1,212 pfu/50 mL of reconstituted CMR (average 248.5 pfu/50 mL). Twelve (14.5%) CMR samples tested positive for viable MAP by PMS-culture; isolates from all 12 of these samples were subsequently confirmed by whole-genome sequencing to be different cattle strains of MAP. Seven (8.4%) CMR samples tested positive for MAP DNA by IS900 qPCR. Four CMR samples tested positive by both PMS-based tests and 5 CMR samples tested positive by IS900 qPCR plus one or other of the PMS-based tests, but only one CMR sample tested positive by all 3 MAP detection tests applied. All conventional microbiology results were within current standards for whole milk powders. A significant association existed between higher total bacterial counts and presence of viable MAP indicated by either of the PMS-based assays. This represents the first published report of the isolation of viable MAP from CMR. Our findings raise concerns about the potential ability of MAP to survive manufacture of dried milk-based products.