Direct detection of viable bacteria, molds, and yeasts by reverse transcriptase PCR in contaminated milk samples after heat treatment.

A fast, sensitive, and target contaminant-modulable method was developed to detect viable bacteria, molds, and yeasts after heat treatment. By reverse transcriptase PCR with elongation factor gene (EF-Tu or EF-1 alpha)-specific primers, the detection level was 10 cells ml of milk-1. The simplicity and rapidity (4 h) of the procedure suggests that this method may be easily transposable to other foods and other contaminants.