Microplastics and Food Safety: Emerging pollutants such as microplastics and nanoplastics are ubiquitous in the natural environments. Plastics as chemicals are intricately related to foods and food production venues at pre- and post-harvest stages. A growing body of scientific evidence indicates that these weathered plastic fragments of different sizes may interact significantly with microorganisms present in agroecosystems and even in foods. We investigate how microplastics may influence foodborne pathogens, biofilm formation, and antimicrobial resistance.
Related publication:
- Nath J, De J, Sur S, Banerjee P. Interaction of Microbes with Microplastics and Nanoplastics in the Agroecosystems-Impact on Antimicrobial Resistance. Pathogens. 2023 Jun 29;12(7):888. doi: 10.3390/pathogens12070888. PMID: 37513735; PMCID: PMC10386327.
News coverage:
Metagenomics: water microbiology and its implication on public health. In this study, we examined the overall bacterial diversity of selected source and point-of-use water from rural areas in Central Plateau, Haiti using next generation sequencing (NGS) based metataxonomics methods (amplicon sequencing of 16S rRNA genes). The figure above represents a dual Hierarchal dendrogram evaluation of the taxonomic classification of source and point-of-use water samples. The heatmap represents the relative percentages of each bacterial genus found in different samples.
Ref: Mukherjee et al., PLoS One. 2016;11(12):e0167353
Rapid microbial diagnostic method development
Cell-based Assay for Rapid Detection (CBARD) Sensor for pathogens. Our lab has developed novel cell-based biosensors to distinguish viable or pathogenic bacterial cells from non-viable or non-pathogenic cells and active toxins from inactive toxins from food.
Refs: Banerjee et al., Biosens Bioelectron. 2010; 26(1): 99–106; Banerjee et al., Toxins. 2013;5(12):2366–83.
Foodborne pathogens may show up at any point during harvesting, manufacturing, processing, and packing, or even at the point of use (at the consumer’s end). Therefore, a better understanding of the routes of pathogen transmission and their survival in foods is critical. WGS-based approaches have improved the resolutions of foodborne disease outbreak investigations and epidemiology. In this direction, we are developing WGS-based analysis pipeline as a novel approach to tracking the ecological niche or source of pathogens. Moreover, the environment poses stress to pathogens and may alter their virulence. We are working on understanding the role of food-related stressors (temperature, desiccation, or sanitizers) in virulence and antimicrobial resistance in multi-drug resistant and drug-sensitive pathogens using WGS and NGS tools.
Related publications:
- Higgins D, Mukherjee N, Pal C, Sulaiman IM, Jiang Y, Hanna S, Dunn JR, Karmaus W, Banerjee P. Association of Virulence and Antibiotic Resistance in Salmonella-Statistical and Computational Insights into a Selected Set of Clinical Isolates. Microorganisms. 2020;8(10):1465. doi: 10.3390/microorganisms8101465. PMID: 32987719.
- Banerjee G, Quan FS, Mondal AK, Sur S, Banerjee P, Chattopadhyay P. Interrelation between Stress Management and Secretion Systems of Ralstonia solanacearum: An In Silico Assessment. Pathogens. 2022;11(7):730. doi: 10.3390/pathogens11070730. PMID: 35889976
- Kennedy NM, Mukherjee N, Banerjee P. Escherichia coli O157:H7 Cells Exposed to Lettuce Leaf Lysate in Refrigerated Conditions Exhibit Differential Expression of Selected Virulence and Adhesion-Related Genes with Altered Mammalian Cell Adherence. J Food Prot. 2016;79(7):1259-65. doi: 10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-15-504. PMID: 27357048.
Probiotics and microbiome research in diet, nutrition, and chronic disease
We are interested in understanding how emerging probiotic microbes such as Akkermansia muciniphila confer health benefits. Using WGA, NGS-based shotgun sequencing, and metabolomics, we are investigating the interactions of the gut microbiome (including prebiotic bacteria) with prebiotics and postbiotics. Our goal is to develop “designer probiotics” based therapies for chronic diseases such as NAFLD and cancer.
Related publications:
- Satapathy SK, Banerjee P, Pierre JF, Higgins D, Dutta S, Heda R, Khan SD, Mupparaju VK, Mas V, Nair S, Eason JD, Kleiner DE, Maluf DG. Characterization of Gut Microbiome in Liver Transplant Recipients With Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis. Transplant Direct. 2020;6(12):e625. doi: 10.1097/TXD.0000000000001033. PMID: 33204823.
- Banerjee G, Papri SR, Satapathy SK, Banerjee P. Akkermansia muciniphila - a Potential Next-generation Probiotic for Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. Curr Pharm Biotechnol. 2023 Sep 15. doi: 10.2174/1389201025666230915103052. PMID: 37724669.
Abundance of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in food samples by shotgun metagenomics. Selected foods (lettuce (L), cabbage (C), deli meat (DM), and chicken legs (CL); n = 200) were procured from retail outlets. The graphs represent the relative percentages of each class of ARG. Panel (A) presents the ARG abundance based on MiSeq data; panel (B) represents the distribution of ARG classes from HiSeq data. The average sequencing depths were 640,000 and 50.8 million reads per sample for MiSeq and HiSeq, respectively.