Animals are important reservoir of Listeria monocytogenes, a pathogen causing serious infections in both humans and livestock. However, data on invasiveness of L. monocytogenes strains of animal origin is very scarce. Ability of 18 L. monocytogenes strains of animal origin to invade HT-29 cells was investigated. Plaque forming assay was used to assess invasiveness and ability of the pathogen to...

Effective protection against Listeria monocytogenes requires Ag-specific CD8(+) T cells. A substantial proportion of CD8(+) T cells activated during L. monocytogenes infection of C57BL/6 mice are restricted by the MHC class Ib molecule H2-M3. In this study, an H2-M3-restricted CD8(+) T cell clone specific for a known H2-M3 epitope (fMIGWII) was generated from L. monocytogenes-infected mice. The...

Listeria monocytogenes is a foodborne pathogen of global concern because of the high mortality rate among patients. The draft genome sequences of three L. monocytogenes strains isolated from foods are reported here. The availability of these genomes should provide useful information on the genomic diversity of L. monocytogenes isolated from foods in China.

We report here the draft genome sequence of Listeria monocytogenes strain SLCC208 from Seeliger's historical Special Listeria Culture Collection, initially cultured from a human case in France in 1921. This is, to our knowledge, the oldest L. monocytogenes isolate available and may be useful for comparative genomic studies of L. monocytogenes.

Involvement of the liver in cases of Listeria monocytogenes is uncommon. We report a case of hepatitis due to L. monocytogenes, with a pathological finding of multiple abscesses. Blood cultures yielded L. monocytogenes. The patient died a few days after admission.

A quantitative method based on a real-time PCR assay to enumerate Listeria monocytogenes in biofilms was developed. The specificity for L. monocytogenes of primers targeting the listeriolysin gene was demonstrated using a SYBR Green I real-time PCR assay. The number of L. monocytogenes detected growing in biofilms was 6 x 10(2) CFU/cm2.

Latin-style fresh cheeses, which have been linked to at least 2 human listeriosis outbreaks in the United States, are considered to be high-risk foods for Listeria monocytogenes contamination. We evaluated L. monocytogenes contamination patterns in 3 Latin-style fresh-cheese processing plants to gain a better understanding of L. monocytogenes contamination sources in the manufacture of these ch...

Many bacteria are known to inhibit food pathogens, such as Listeria monocytogenes, by secreting a variety of bactericidal and bacteriostatic substances. In sharp contrast, it is unknown whether yeast has an inhibitory potential for the growth of pathogenic bacteria in food. A total of 404 yeasts were screened for inhibitory activity against five Listeria monocytogenes strains. Three hundred and...

In this study, the effects of various concentrations of NaCl and KCl and partial replacement of NaCl withKCl on the growth characteristics of L. monocytogenes were evaluated. It was found that L. monocytogenescan grow in the presence of 1-9% NaCl and 1-11% KCl. The higher the concentration of salt used, the longerthe lag phase induced. In addition, it was observed that L. monocytogenes tolerate...

Listeria monocytogenes strains possess short repetitive extragenic palindromic (REP) elements and enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) sequences. We used repetitive element sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR) to evaluate the potential of REP and ERIC elements for typing L. monocytogenes strains isolated from humans, animals, and foods. On the basis of rep-PCR fingerprints, L. monocyt...