Isolation and characterization of Enterobacter from egg yolk
J.K. Pallavi*b, M. Soundaryaa, Kolluru Viswanatha Chaitanyab and M. Sukumara
aCenter for Food Technology, Anna University, Chennai–600025 (India) bDepartment of Microbiology and Food Science Technology, GITAM Institute of Science, GITAM deemed to be University, Visakhapatnam–530045 (India) * Corresponding Author : Dr. JK Pallavi Orcid ID 0000-0003-4903-9523 Email: pallavijangala@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
The present study describes different approaches that lead to the identification of Enterobacter from commercially sold eggs in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Morphological and biochemical methods were applied to categorize a Gram negative, catalase positive, oxidase negative, ampicillin and cephalosporin resistant, erythromycin susceptible, tetracycline mildly resistant isolate into either Bacillus or Enterobacter genera. DNA Sequencing was performed using the 16s rRNA primers. The resulting sequences were subjected to a BLASTn search in the NCBI database that yielded a 99% genome similarity with Enterobacter xiangfangensis and Enterobacter hormaechei. Further, on the genomic pipeline of Center for Genomic Epidemiology (CGE), the bacterium was identified as Enterobacter hormaechei. A bacterial smear of the same was prepared and it’s m/z values were generated by subjecting to MALDI-TOF to identify its genus and species as Enterobacter cloacae and Enterobacter kobei as the first and second best hit respectively. The study explores suitability of the diverse methods of bacterial identification and highlights the need of a consensus approach.