Droplet-based Digital PCR System for Detection of Single-cell Level of Foodborne Pathogens

Recently, foodborne pathogen is a common and distressing disease around world to cause a threat to life and economic damages and it is urgent to develop a tools to diagnosis of such pathogens in the early stage to prevent potential outbreak. Although conventional cell extraction and recovery of DNA from pathogen and PCR method have been widely used, the methods require complex steps, experts, and expensive chemicals and instruments to improve the PCR performance. Herein, we report a droplet-based polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) system which allows identifying single-cell level of foodborne pathogens. E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella cells were selected as model bacterial foodborne pathogens. The ddPCR system could be a useful platform for the quantitative detection of foodborne pathogens without any pretreatment process.