Missouriwatcher
Editor, Senior Moderator
July 12 - Despite efforts to reduce outbreaks, bacteria like Salmonella, Campylobacter, E. coli and Listeria are pervasive in the environment.
...Every year an estimated 48 million Americans get sick from a foodborne disease, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Despite progress in our understanding of these pathogens, there is a lot that scientists do not yet understand, including where these harmful organisms live, how they survive or multiply in the environment, and whether some geographic locations affect them in unique ways.
To answer these and other questions, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is embarking on a five-year collaboration with public and private partners to create a public database of the gene sequences of 100,000 bacteria that have been responsible for outbreaks of foodborne illnesses around the world...
The goal of this effort, called "The 100K Genome Project" is to give public health officials the tools they need to more rapidly identify the source of the contamination and bring these outbreaks under control..
Musser explains that this new database containing the genetic codes of food pathogens will:
enable scientists in both the public and private sectors to develop tests that can identify the bacteria present in a sample within days or even hours.
help investigators discover the likely source of an outbreak...
This initiative is a collaboration between FDA, the University of California/Davis, and Agilent Technologies Inc.
The genomic sequencing will be done at a new facility at UC Davis that will coordinate the overall effort. As the gene sequences are completed, they will be stored in the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Biotechnology Information's public database...
Agilent?a company that manufactures equipment for electronic and bio-analytical measurement?is supplying expertise, instrumentation and funding.
The list of collaborators contributing to the project continues to grow. For example, CDC and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) have both joined the initiative...
CDC will provide its foodborne disease expertise, strains to be sequenced and other information for use in the project...
http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm311086.htm
...Every year an estimated 48 million Americans get sick from a foodborne disease, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Despite progress in our understanding of these pathogens, there is a lot that scientists do not yet understand, including where these harmful organisms live, how they survive or multiply in the environment, and whether some geographic locations affect them in unique ways.
To answer these and other questions, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is embarking on a five-year collaboration with public and private partners to create a public database of the gene sequences of 100,000 bacteria that have been responsible for outbreaks of foodborne illnesses around the world...
The goal of this effort, called "The 100K Genome Project" is to give public health officials the tools they need to more rapidly identify the source of the contamination and bring these outbreaks under control..
Musser explains that this new database containing the genetic codes of food pathogens will:
enable scientists in both the public and private sectors to develop tests that can identify the bacteria present in a sample within days or even hours.
help investigators discover the likely source of an outbreak...
This initiative is a collaboration between FDA, the University of California/Davis, and Agilent Technologies Inc.
The genomic sequencing will be done at a new facility at UC Davis that will coordinate the overall effort. As the gene sequences are completed, they will be stored in the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Biotechnology Information's public database...
Agilent?a company that manufactures equipment for electronic and bio-analytical measurement?is supplying expertise, instrumentation and funding.
The list of collaborators contributing to the project continues to grow. For example, CDC and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) have both joined the initiative...
CDC will provide its foodborne disease expertise, strains to be sequenced and other information for use in the project...
http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm311086.htm