Biotech Updates

Research To Speed The Tracing of Salmonella Outbreaks

September 2, 2011

Cornell University food scientists led by Dr. Martin Wiedmann have studied and devised ways on how to speedily identify salmonella bacteria, the causal microorganism of food poisoning incidences in the U.S.. The paper published in the journal BMC Genomics showed that through genome sequence analysis, salmonella pathogen can be categorized into clade A common in mammals and clade B which is common in reptiles, but both can cause disease in humans.

A comparative study of the genome sequences of 47 different salmonella strains was also conducted and 16 new ones were sequenced for the first time. The research results may also help health officials predict strain-specific characteristics, and determine possible risk groups and the diseases caused by such strains.

Details on this news can be seen at http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug11/SalmonellaSequence.html