The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Molecular Screening of Enterococcus Virulence Determinants and Potential for Genetic Exchange between Food and Medical Isolates
Open accessAbstract
Enterococci are used as starter and probiotic cultures in foods, and they occur as natural food contaminants. The genus Enterococcus is of increased significance as a cause of nosocomial infections, and this trend is exacerbated by the development of antibiotic resistance. In this study, we investigated the incidence of known virulence determinants in starter, food, and medical strains of Enterococcus faecalis , E. faecium , and E. durans . PCR and gene probe strategies were used to screen enterococcal isolates from both food and medical sources. Different and distinct patterns of incidence of virulence determinants were found for the E. faecalis and E. faecium strains. Medical E. faecalis strains had more virulence determinants than did food strains, which, in turn, had more than did starter strains. All of the E. faecalis strains tested possessed multiple determinants (between 6 and 11). E. faecium strains were generally free of virulence determinants, with notable exceptions. Significantly, esp and gelE determinants were identified in E. faecium medical strains. These virulence determinants have not previously been identified in E. faecium strains and may result from regional differences or the evolution of pathogenic E. faecium . Phenotypic testing revealed the existence of apparently silent gelE and cyl genes. In E. faecalis , the trend in these silent genes mirrors that of the expressed determinants. The potential for starter strains to acquire virulence determinants by natural conjugation mechanisms was investigated. Transconjugation in which starter strains acquired additional virulence determinants from medical strains was demonstrated. In addition, multiple pheromone-encoding genes were identified in both food and starter strains, indicating their potential to acquire other sex pheromone plasmids. These results suggest that the use of Enterococcus spp. in foods requires careful safety evaluation.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Safety assessment of probiotics for human use
Sanders, M. E., Akkermans, L. M. A., Haller, D., Hammerman, C., Heimbach, J. T., Hörmannsperger, G., & Huys, G. (2010) · Gut Microbes · doi:10.4161/gmic.1.3.12127 · Cited by 816
Human milk is a source of lactic acid bacteria for the infant gut
Martín, R., Langa, S., Reviriego, C., Jimínez, E., Marín, M. L., Xaus, J., Fernández, L., & Rodríguez, J. M. (2003) · The Journal of Pediatrics · doi:10.1016/j.jpeds.2003.09.028 · Cited by 792
Enterococci as probiotics and their implications in food safety
Franz, C. M. A. P., Huch, M., Abriouel, H., Holzapfel, W., & Gálvez, A. (2011) · International Journal of Food Microbiology · doi:10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2011.08.014 · Cited by 788
Application of bacteriocins and protective cultures in dairy food preservation
Silva, C. C. G., Silva, S. P. M., & Ribeiro, S. C. (2018) · Frontiers in Microbiology · doi:10.3389/fmicb.2018.00594 · Cited by 601
Vankerckhoven, V., Van Autgaerden, T., Vael, C., Lammens, C., Chapelle, S., Rossi, R., Jabes, D., & Goossens, H. (2004) · Journal of Clinical Microbiology · doi:10.1128/jcm.42.10.4473-4479.2004 · Cited by 594
Metadata
- Authors
- Eaton, T. J., & Gasson, M. J.
- Venue
- Applied and Environmental Microbiology
- Publisher
- American Society for Microbiology
- Published
- 2001-04
- Volume
- 67
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1628-1635
- ISSN
- 0099-2240 (ISSN-L)
- 1098-5336
- OpenAlex
- W2117438470
- Cited by
- 943
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 13.53
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Molecular Screening of Enterococcus Virulence Determinants and Potential for Genetic Exchange between Food and Medical Isolates. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1128/aem.67.4.1628-1635.2001
- The paper
- Eaton, T. J., & Gasson, M. J. (2001). Molecular Screening of Enterococcus Virulence Determinants and Potential for Genetic Exchange between Food and Medical Isolates. Applied and Environmental Microbiology. https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.67.4.1628-1635.2001
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
