Abstract
Staphylococcus aureus-mediated food poisoning is a primary concern worldwide. The presence of the organism in food is an indicative of poor sanitation during production, and it is essential to have efficient methods for detecting this pathogen. A novel molecular diagnostic technique called loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) serves as a rapid and sensitive detection method, which amplifies nucleic acids at isothermal conditions. In this study, a LAMP-based diagnostic assay was developed to detect Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) using two target genes femA and arcC. The optimum reaction temperature was found to be 65 °C and at 60 °C for femA and arcC genes, respectively. The developed assay specifically amplified DNA from S. aureus, not from other related bacterial species and compared to PCR, and a 100-fold higher sensitivity was observed. Furthermore, the LAMP assay could detect the pathogen from food samples mainly meat and dairy samples when analyzed in both intact and enriched conditions. Thirteen samples were found positive for S. aureus with LAMP showing a greater number of positive samples in comparison to PCR. This study established a highly sensitive and a rapid diagnostic procedure for the detection and surveillance of this major foodborne pathogen.