ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Food Microbiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1629731
An inter-laboratory study characterizes the impact of bioinformatic approaches on genome-based cluster detection for foodborne bacterial pathogens
Provisionally accepted- 1Department of Biological Safety, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, Berlin, Germany
- 2State Office for Consumer Protection of Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle, Germany
- 3Institute of Microbiology and Biotechnology, Max Rubner-Institute, Kiel, Germany
- 4Chemical and Veterinary Analytical Institute Rhein-Ruhr-Wupper, Krefeld, Germany
- 5Institute of Bacterial Infections and Zoonoses, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute, Jena, Germany
- 6Chemical and Veterinary Analysis Agency Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany
- 7Chemical and Veterinary Analysis Agency Stuttgart, Feldbach, Germany
- 8Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority, Oberschleißheim, Germany
- 9Department of Veterinary Medicine, Hessian State Laboratory, Gießen, Germany
- 10Chemical and Veterinary Analytical Institute Ostwestfalen-Lippe, Detmold, Germany
- 11Hamburg Public Laboratories for Food Safety, Health Protection and Environmental Assessment, Institute for Hygiene and Environment, Hamburg, Germany
- 12Sequencing and Genotyping Service Unit, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics en, Dresden, Germany
- 13Food and Veterinary Institute Braunschweig/Hannover, Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, Braunschweig, Germany
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Accurate assignment of whole-genome sequences to clusters in foodborne outbreak investigations remains challenging. Variability in bioinformatics tools and quality metrics significantly impacts clustering outcomes. This study assessed inter-laboratory variance in cluster identification by providing four datasets of 50 raw Illumina paired-end sequences covering Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella enterica, and Campylobacter jejuni. Following general rules of a specified guideline, participants applied in-house protocols for read quality assessment, 7-gene MLST, cgMLST, and SNP calling, then assigned samples to predefined focus clusters based on allele distance (AD) and mutations. Results revealed that differences in the interpretation of raw sequence and genome assembly quality influenced sample inclusion and finally cluster composition. Here, intra-species contamination was the most significant factor driving variability in decisions on whether to include or exclude samples. With one exception, 7-gene Multilocus-Sequence Typing (MLST) yielded consistent sequence types using different bioinformatics tools. The largest influence on cgMLST-defined clusters was the inclusion or exclusion of samples. Regarding bioinformatics, cgMLST was mainly reproducible. For S. enterica, discrepancies due to different software (Ridom SeqSphere+ vs. ChewieSnake) were larger than discrepancies due to different schemas. For other species, different schemas introduced larger discrepancies than different software. Most notably, C. jejuni cluster assignment was strongly affected by cgMLST schemas differing by a factor of two in the number of loci. SNP calling using Snippy produced concordant results across participants, except for C. jejuni when recombination filtering was used. This study highlights the impact caused by different interpretations of quality values when assessing clusters. Low-resolution cgMLST schemas were unsuitable for Campylobacter jejuni, and clustering near cut-off values was sensitive to bioinformatics tool selection. Standardized protocols are essential for reliable inter-laboratory comparison in foodborne pathogen surveillance.
Keywords: Inter-laboratory study, Whole-genome sequencing, Public Health, Food Safety, Bioinformatic tools, Cluster detection, foodborne pathogens, Campylobacter jejuni
Received: 16 May 2025; Accepted: 01 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Forth, Malorny, Bönn, Brinks, Denay, Deneke, El-Adawy, Fischer, Fuchs, Hiller, Bretschneider, Kleta, Lüth, Schultze, Petersen, Projahn, Schäfers, Stingl, Stroehlein, Uelze, Szabo, Wöhlke and Linde. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Leonie Franziska Forth, leonie.forth@bfr.bund.de
Jörg Linde, joerg.linde@fli.de
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