Strengthening food safety in Mexico: Pathogen detection through innovative strategies such as Synthetic Biology

Abstract

Diseases transmitted by food contaminated with pathogenic microorganisms or toxic chemical compounds are a public health problem that affects people and causes significant economic burdens. Bacteria such as Campylobacter jejuni, Salmonella Typhi, Staphylococcus aureus, enteropathogenic Escherichia coli, and Listeria monocytogenes can cause considerable damage to people's health, and some of them can even cause death and be responsible for epidemiological outbreaks. Food safety is an important issue worldwide, so rapid detection of pathogens in food is essential to ensure safe food. This work shows the generalities of food biosafety, its importance, and some of Mexico's most critical foodborne pathogenic microorganisms, emphasizing bacteria, traditional and molecular detection methods, and new methodologies developed through synthetic biology. Finally, it is shown our perspective for future studies.