Human efforts in protecting foods from the predatory microbiological pathogens is an ongoing fight ever since the dawn of civilization and the fact that there are still many pathogens lurking around without getting annihilated speaks volume about their sagacity, perseverance and adaptability. In spite of most sophisticated detection technologies and space age electronic instruments to track them, pathogens seem to be one step ahead of humans in infecting foods and spreading diseases. Whether it is meat contamination with Salmonella or other food poisoning out breaks, the experience has shown that it requires long time in tracing the source of contamination and take ameliorative actions. Precious human lives can be saved if the time lapse between detection and tracing is shortened. This seems to the be aim of efforts by a new public-private collaborative partnership that has been recently launched where genomic sequences of 100,000 food associated bacterial species are sought to be mapped over a five year period that is expected to help identifying the type of contamination immediately once it is detected. Here are further details of this public data base creating program that will allow food safety officials access the data freely on line.
"The Food and Drug Administration is teaming up with the University of California, Davis to pinpoint the genetic codes of 100,000 types of lethal food-borne bacteria so the agency can more quickly stop deadly contamination outbreaks. A batch of food-safety incidents have hit the U.S. recently. Last year, 25 people died from listeria contamination in Colorado-grown cantaloupes. About 100 people were sickened earlier this year due to salmonella tied to raw tuna in sushi. The FDA will collaborate with the university, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and chemical analysis/engineering company Agilent Technologies Inc.,A -1.03% of Santa Clara, Calif., to sequence the genomes of the bacterial types and subtypes. They then will post the complex genetic codes in a public database maintained by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Biotechnology Information. Steven Musser, director of the FDA's office of regulatory science for food safety, said the novel venture will be akin to the DNA information compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for investigating crimes. "Right now, we spend a lot of time after an outbreak trying to figure out what country is it from, and how is it spreading," said Dr. Musser. He said such gene sequencing could have been helpful in the investigating this year's salmonella outbreak in tuna, which originated from a plant in India, the FDA concluded after investigating. "If you don't have a DNA database for these bacteria, you're working largely blind," said Paul Zavitsanos, Agilent's world-wide food-safety manager. "You've got to know what variant of bacteria you're dealing with." So, in the case of the tuna in sushi, Mr. Zavitsanos said it would be possible, with such a database, to know quickly that the salmonella variant causing illnesses came from fish and "you'd probably know geographically where it was centered on the planet." Armed with that information, he said, federal authorities could quickly shut down ports of entry for that type of fish and minimize the spread of illness. "If we had this genetic sequence already, we could know immediately that the salmonella probably came from India, and we could have responded much more quickly," said Dr. Musser. In that instance, it took nearly two months for the agency to confirm that sushi was to blame in the outbreak that is believed to have begun in February. He said having this extensive pathogen database also will speed up the process through which the CDC confirms that illnesses are linked, and that an outbreak is even taking place. The FDA said the new database can lead to tests that have the potential to significantly reduce the typical public-health response time in outbreaks of food-borne illness to days instead of weeks. The venture, which will be termed The 100K Genome Project, will be a five-year effort to discern the genetic codes of subtypes of important pathogens like salmonella, listeria and E. coli, all responsible for widespread outbreaks from a range of food products in recent years. The Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, which inspects meat in the U.S., also will cooperate in the effort. The actual sequencing will occur largely at a newly formed genome sequencing facility at UC Davis".
"The Food and Drug Administration is teaming up with the University of California, Davis to pinpoint the genetic codes of 100,000 types of lethal food-borne bacteria so the agency can more quickly stop deadly contamination outbreaks. A batch of food-safety incidents have hit the U.S. recently. Last year, 25 people died from listeria contamination in Colorado-grown cantaloupes. About 100 people were sickened earlier this year due to salmonella tied to raw tuna in sushi. The FDA will collaborate with the university, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and chemical analysis/engineering company Agilent Technologies Inc.,A -1.03% of Santa Clara, Calif., to sequence the genomes of the bacterial types and subtypes. They then will post the complex genetic codes in a public database maintained by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Biotechnology Information. Steven Musser, director of the FDA's office of regulatory science for food safety, said the novel venture will be akin to the DNA information compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for investigating crimes. "Right now, we spend a lot of time after an outbreak trying to figure out what country is it from, and how is it spreading," said Dr. Musser. He said such gene sequencing could have been helpful in the investigating this year's salmonella outbreak in tuna, which originated from a plant in India, the FDA concluded after investigating. "If you don't have a DNA database for these bacteria, you're working largely blind," said Paul Zavitsanos, Agilent's world-wide food-safety manager. "You've got to know what variant of bacteria you're dealing with." So, in the case of the tuna in sushi, Mr. Zavitsanos said it would be possible, with such a database, to know quickly that the salmonella variant causing illnesses came from fish and "you'd probably know geographically where it was centered on the planet." Armed with that information, he said, federal authorities could quickly shut down ports of entry for that type of fish and minimize the spread of illness. "If we had this genetic sequence already, we could know immediately that the salmonella probably came from India, and we could have responded much more quickly," said Dr. Musser. In that instance, it took nearly two months for the agency to confirm that sushi was to blame in the outbreak that is believed to have begun in February. He said having this extensive pathogen database also will speed up the process through which the CDC confirms that illnesses are linked, and that an outbreak is even taking place. The FDA said the new database can lead to tests that have the potential to significantly reduce the typical public-health response time in outbreaks of food-borne illness to days instead of weeks. The venture, which will be termed The 100K Genome Project, will be a five-year effort to discern the genetic codes of subtypes of important pathogens like salmonella, listeria and E. coli, all responsible for widespread outbreaks from a range of food products in recent years. The Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, which inspects meat in the U.S., also will cooperate in the effort. The actual sequencing will occur largely at a newly formed genome sequencing facility at UC Davis".
The free database that will be set up at the University of California, Davis, will enable scientists to pinpoint not only what food carries the bacteria responsible for a given outbreak but also what country it came from. Such outbreaks generally take weeks to solve but the new database after it is created, is expected to reduce that to a matter of a few days. So far scientists have been able to identify as many as 3,000 sequences out of which only about 1,000 are related to food. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US has the largest such database but the gene maps it contains are only partial, not enough to determine which food the illness came from or its geographic origin. Cataloging gene codes is time-consuming and expensive. For example Salmonella alone has about 2,700 different strains, almost three times as many as all the sequences for food-borne bacteria that have been cataloged to date. When the project is completed in 5 years time, it may hopefully herald a new era for human beings to live without any serious fear of food borne infection dangers lurking among them.
V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com
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