Combined production of Non-Hemolytic Enterotoxin and Sphingomyelinase as a marker of diarrheal food poisoning strains in the Bacillus cereus group
- 1INRAE Centre Île-de-France Jouy-en-Josas Antony: Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture l'Alimentation et l'Environnement Centre Ile-de-France Jouy-e
Abstract
The Bacillus cereus group comprises bacteria of biotechnological interest, but also raises health concerns. Some bacteria in this group are opportunistic human pathogens, mainly causing foodborne gastrointestinal infections. As of today, the presence, sequence variability, or expression of genes encoding toxins or other virulence factors are insufficient to predict the potential of a given isolate to cause the diarrheal form of the disease. To address this limitation, we developed a sandwich ELISA to quantify the NheA and Sphingomyelinase (SMase) proteins in culture supernatants to test them as markers of pathogenic potential. Application of the assay to a collection of B. cereus group isolates revealed that strains associated with food poisoning outbreaks produce significantly more NheA and SMase than those isolated from the environment or from commercial products. Statistical analyses show that the combined quantification of NheA and SMase provides robust discrimination between pathogenic and non-pathogenic (environmental and commercial) profiles. These results demonstrate that the quantitative assessment of both NheA and SMase production can serve as a reliable biomarker for distinguishing diarrheic food poisoning isolates from harmless strains.
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BibTeX
@misc{cardoso2026combined,
title = {{Combined production of Non-Hemolytic Enterotoxin and Sphingomyelinase as a marker of diarrheal food poisoning strains in the Bacillus cereus group}},
author = {P. de Freitas Cardoso and N. Gilois and G. Trinidade Vilas-Boas and D. Lereclus and M. Gohar and S. Perchat and L. Slamti},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.64898/2026.08.27.747690},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.27.747690v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Combined production of Non-Hemolytic Enterotoxin and Sphingomyelinase as a marker of diarrheal food poisoning strains in the Bacillus cereus group
AU - P. de Freitas Cardoso
AU - N. Gilois
AU - G. Trinidade Vilas-Boas
AU - D. Lereclus
AU - M. Gohar
AU - S. Perchat
AU - L. Slamti
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/27
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.08.27.747690
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.27.747690v1
AB - The Bacillus cereus group comprises bacteria of biotechnological interest, but also raises health concerns. Some bacteria in this group are opportunistic human pathogens, mainly causing foodborne gastrointestinal infections. As of today, the presence, sequence variability, or expression of genes encoding toxins or other virulence factors are insufficient to predict the potential of a given isolate to cause the diarrheal form of the disease. To address this limitation, we developed a sandwich ELISA to quantify the NheA and Sphingomyelinase (SMase) proteins in culture supernatants to test them as markers of pathogenic potential. Application of the assay to a collection of B. cereus group isolates revealed that strains associated with food poisoning outbreaks produce significantly more NheA and SMase than those isolated from the environment or from commercial products. Statistical analyses show that the combined quantification of NheA and SMase provides robust discrimination between pathogenic and non-pathogenic (environmental and commercial) profiles. These results demonstrate that the quantitative assessment of both NheA and SMase production can serve as a reliable biomarker for distinguishing diarrheic food poisoning isolates from harmless strains.
ER -