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ARS Home » Plains Area » Lubbock, Texas » Cropping Systems Research Laboratory » Livestock Issues Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #217730
Title: Molecular epidemiology of Salmonella spp.: Sequencing of ileS, leuS, and pyrG gene hyper-variable regions as a primary foundation for typing and contaminant source tracking

Author
item Dowd, Scot

Submitted to: National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
Publication Type: Other
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/15/2008
Publication Date: 5/22/2008
Citation: Dowd, S.E. 2008. Molecular epidemiology of Salmonella spp.: Sequencing of ileS, leuS, and PyrG gene hyper-variable regions as a primary foundation for typing and contaminant source tracking. National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Available: http://www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov. Accession numbers: EU278345-EU278595.

Interpretive Summary: Salmonella spp. continues to be one of the primary foodborne pathogens. There is a need to develop scientific methods to locate the original source of contamination when such bacteria cause a public foodborne outbreak. ARS scientists in Lubbock, TX, have utilized advance genetic sequencing technologies to identify regions in the genomes of this deadly pathogen that can be utilized as comprehensive signatures. This type of technology can eventually be developed and utilized to track the original source of a pathogen associated with foodborne pathogen outbreaks.

Technical Abstract: Salmonella spp. continues to be one of the primary foodborne pathogens. Requests for improved methods of source tracking of Salmonella adulterants by the livestock industry have been prevalent for the past 10 years. With modern sequencing methodologies there is the potential for development of novel and improved methods for source tracking. Pyrosequencing provides one of these potential technologies. As a first step in the development of pyrosequencing as a method for source tracking we have performed amplicon sequencing on 100 members of Salmonella spp. representing nearly 90 serotypes. The target chosen for this pilot project were noted hyper-variable regions of the conserved ileS, leuS, and the pyrG genes. Sequences from this project were published into the National Center for Genome Research (NCBI). The use of sequencing methods to analyze conserved genes containing hypervariable regions suggests that such sequencing approaches can be utilized as reliable tools for serotyping and possibly source tracking of Salmonella spp.