Norovirus causes acute gastroenteritis in all age groups and its food poisoning outbreaks are rapidly increasing in Korea. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is most widely used for the rapid detection of foodborne viruses due to high sensitivity. However, the false positive results of RT-PCR obtained against already inactivated viruses could be a serious drawbacks in food safety area. In this study, we investigated a method to yield true positive RT-PCR results only with alive viruses. To decompose the RNA genes from dead viruses, the enzymatic treatments composed of proteinse K and Ribonuclease A were applied to the sanitized and inactivated virus particles. Another aim of this study was to quantify the efficiencies of several major sanitizing treatments using realtime RT-PCR. Feline calicivirus (FCV) that belongs to the same Caliciviridae family with norovirus was used as a surrogate model for norovirus. The initial level of virus in control suspension was approximately 104 PFU/mL. Most of inactivated viruses treated with the enzymatic treatment for 30 min at 37oC were not detected in RT-PCR, Quantification results to verify the inactivation efficiencies of sanitizing treatments using real-time RT-PCR showed no false positive in most cases. We could successfully develope a numerical quantification process for the inactivated viruses after major sanitizing treatments using real-time RT-PCR. The results obtained in this study could provide a novel basis of rapid virus quantification in food safety area.

ABSTRACT
 재료 및 방법
  세포배양
  바이러스
  Plaque assay
  Standard curve 산출
  물리, 화학적 위생처리를 통한 FCV의 불활성화
  Viral RNA 추출
  RT-PCR
  Real-time RT-PCR
  불활성화 효율 계산
 결과 및 고찰
  Plaque assay
  Standard curve
  물리적 위생처리
  화학적 위생처리
 요 약
 참고문헌

• 정혜미(충북대학교 식품생명공학과) | Hye Mi Jeong (Dept. of Food Science and Biotechnology, Chungbuk National University)
• 김광엽(충북대학교 식품생명공학과) | Kwang Yup Kim (Dept. of Food Science and Biotechnology, Chungbuk National University) Correspondence to