The 2nd Workshop on Advanced Methods in Food Microbiology and Chemistry

Hong Kong is a metropolitan city with relatively small area and large population. Food safety and security is always an important issue in our daily life. The objectives of this workshop are sharing advanced methods for the detection of microbes and chemicals in food which would benefit over management of food safety and security. The workshop was organized by Department of Biology and Chemistry (BCH) in City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and co-organized by Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC), as well as, supported by Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) on 12th May 2015. Dr. Richard Cheung (Asso. Professor, BCH) was workshop leader.

The first speaker was Prof. Hoi Shan KWAN (Professor, School of Life Sciences and Director, Food Research Centre, CUHK) and his presentation topic was “Genome Sequencing for Foodborne Pathogenic Bacteria Analysis”. Prof. Kwan would like to share the high through-put genome sequencing and review a historical case on German E. coil outbreak in 2011.

Prof. Kwan introduced his lab which was supported from RFCID of FHD to construct a Foodborne Pathogen Genome Sequence Database and they could isolate of Salmonella Typhimurium and Vibrio parahaemolyticus in Hong Kong. Then he briefed the cost of sequencing per genome was significantly drop. After that he stated different high through-put genome sequencing technology such as Nanopore Sequencing.

The second part mentioned German E. coil outbreak in May 2011. He said conventional typing methods yield only limited information and he quoted Nick Loman that Crowdsourcing genomic analysis could provide accuracy information and much faster. Therefore, Prof. Kwan said genome sequencing is used in a real outbreak investigation. The diagram demonstrated the analytical workflow in an outbreak between conventional and genome sequence. Finally, he concluded that Genome sequence analyses were Efficient, Effective, Fast and High Coverage.

Q&A

Dr. Eric D.L. RUAN (State Key Laboratory of Environmental and Biological Analysis) was the second speaker and his topic named “Development of novel and simple sampling methods based on mass spectrometry for food analysis”. He mentioned traditional sample preparation involved 65% effort before analysis and then he shared his case studies using different simplified sampling methods.

 

The first case study was “Dietary vitamin E effects on the formation of heterocyclic amines in lean beef. In this study, Dr. Ruan used stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) for sample preparation.

Then Dr. Ruan also shared “Analysis of volatile and flavor compounds in grilled lean beef by SBSE-TD-GC-MS”, “Determination of off-flavor compounds of 2-methylisoborneol (MIB) and geosmin (GSM) in water and fish fillets”, and “Oxidation testing for pork and fish (salmon)”. Dr. Ruan’s studies were related to Quality Control concept for method development included Recovery Study, Stability and Reproducibility, as well as, Validation of Optimized Method.

Finally, Dr. Ruan concluded that SBSE-GC-MS was a simple, sensitive and solvent-less method which was able to be used as enrichment and matrix for food and environment samples.

After the workshop, we had lunch with all speakers, co-organizer and supporting organization.
(Left: Dr. Vincent Ko (Asso. Professor, BCH, CityU), I, Dr. Eric Ruan, Dr. Richard Cheung, Prof. Hoi Shan Kwan and Mr. Tsang Kam Lam (GM, Environmental Management, HKPC)

Reference:
20091113: Workshop on Advanced Methods in Food Microbiology and Chemistry - http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2009/11/workshop-on-advanced-methods-in-food.html