Recently, foodborne pathogen is a common and distressing disease around world to cause a
threat to life and economic damages and it is urgent
to develop a tools to diagnosis of such pathogens in
the early stage to prevent potential outbreak. Although
conventional cell extraction and recovery of DNA from
pathogen and PCR method have been widely used, the
methods require complex steps, experts, and expensive
chemicals and instruments to improve the PCR performance. Herein, we report a droplet-based polymerase
chain reaction (ddPCR) system which allows identifying single-cell level of foodborne pathogens. E. coli
O157:H7 and Salmonella cells were selected as model
bacterial foodborne pathogens. The ddPCR system
could be a useful platform for the quantitative detection of foodborne pathogens without any pretreatment
process.

• Droplet-based Digital PCR System for Detection of Single-cell Level of Foodborne Pathogens