Viable but Nonculturable Bacteria Can Threaten Food Safety

One of the first Chinese scientists to visit the United States after the Cultural Revolution, professor Huai-Shu Xu (1936–2001) carried out marine microbiology research during his visit to professor Rita Colwell’s laboratory at the University of Maryland (Oliver 2016). In 1982, Xu, Colwell, and colleagues demonstrated that bacterial cells that were typically culturable on laboratory media lose their ability to grow after incubation in stressful environments, yet maintain viability (Xu et al. 198…