Abstract

CANCELLED DUE TO FLIGHT DELAYS - Application of Pyrosequencing to the Microbial Ecology Foods

Martin Wagner, Professor, University of Veterinary Medicine

Novel sequencing approaches have completely changed the insight in the composition of microbial communities in the recent years. Depending on the ecosystem studied, only 0.1 to 10% of a microbial community are culturable. Sequencing overcomes this problem by either profiling total DNA ("Who is there?") or RNA ("Who is active"). Due to the mentioned methodological constraints, previous research has mainly traced the fate of single species along food chains. However all pathogens depend on the interaction with the microbial community (called "implicit factor"). Studying implicit factors is an obvious gap in scientific literature. Recent research has enabled to trace the transmission of whole communities either along the chain (from food animals to raw materials and processed food) or across adjacent niches (from non food contact surfaces or food processing environments to food). This holistic approach is fascinating and generates many novel hypotheses on the complexity of microbial communities in food and related environments. We call this field of food science "food ecology" and assume that food ecology revolutionizes our understanding how whole microbiota contribute to food safety violation and spoilage.