FIGURE 5.

Specific detection of EHEC and not mixtures of eae-negative STEC and eae-positive E. coli based on linkage of eae and stx targets using MuSIC ddPCR. The performance of the MuSIC ddPCR assay was evaluated with a panel of 11 EHEC strains with varying serological profiles and with mixed cultures containing an eae-positive (OLC0684) with eae-negative STEC. Association of EHEC virulence targets was assessed by calculating a normalized value for linkage, based on the values provided by the QuantaSoft^TM software (Percent linkage). All positive samples had a percent linkage above 30% while the 6 mixed cultures did not show linkage between the targets. Error bars represent the standard deviation of 4 replicates.