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Volume 172, Issue 2

Molecular surveillance of foodborne bacterial pathogens and resistome in food products from Hong Kong Open Access

Abstract

Foodborne infections pose an increasing public health challenge worldwide. The problem has been aggravated by the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance genes among zoonotic pathogens, which results in a sharp increase in antibiotic resistance rate recorded among the major foodborne pathogens. To obtain an overview of the extent to which food products purchased in the markets in Hong Kong were contaminated by foodborne pathogens, we collected 95 raw meat samples from wet markets and isolated 236 bacterial strains of various species, with being the most dominant species (131 strains). Contamination of food products by multiple foodborne pathogens was commonly observed. These include both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria that exhibit various levels of resistance, with some possessing multiple clinically important antibiotic resistance genes. Seventeen bacterial strains of various species isolated from three food samples were comprehensively analysed by the Oxford Nanopore R10.4 technology. Novel conjugative plasmids carrying antimicrobial resistance gene-bearing mobile genetic elements were commonly detectable in the test strains. Some of the plasmids were shown to have originated from other environmental sources or other bacterial species, indicating that raw foods in the local market may serve as a reservoir of resistance-encoding genetic elements from which such elements are disseminated to various microbial pathogens. These findings suggest a need to perform periodic but comprehensive surveillance of multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens and the major antimicrobial resistance genes in common food products, so as to disrupt the transmission routes of such organisms and the resistance-encoding genetic elements that they harbour.

  • Received:
  • Accepted:
  • Published Online:
Keyword(s): food products , genomics , pathogen isolation , plasmid characterization and resistome profiles
Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • General Research Fund of Research Grant Council of the Government of Hong Kong SAR (Award T11-104/22-R, 11100321, 11100922)
    • Principal Award Recipient: ShengChen
  • Key Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province (Award 2022B1111040002)
    • Principal Award Recipient: ShengChen
© 2026 The Authors
  • This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This article was made open access via a Publish and Read agreement between the Microbiology Society and the corresponding author’s institution.
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2026-02-02
2026-02-15

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Molecular surveillance of foodborne bacterial pathogens and resistome in food products from Hong Kong
Microbiology 172, 001661 (2026); https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.001661
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001661
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001661
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