Research Publications (Food Safety)

Background. Gastroenteritis due to foodborne disease is a leading cause of death in developing countries. In Nigeria, there is an increasing demand for beef.

Burkholderia pseudomallei is a Gram-negative soil-dwelling bacillus that causes melioidosis, a frequently fatal infectious disease, in tropical and subtropical regions.

Microbial organisms have diverse populations, where using a single linear reference sequence in comparative studies introduces reference-bias in downstream analyses, and leads to a failure to account for variability in the population. Recently, pan-genome graphs have emerged as an alternative to the traditional linear reference with many successful applications and a rapid increase in the number of methods available in the literature.

The human zoonotic pathogen Escherichia coli O157:H7 is defined by its extensive prophage repertoire including those that encode Shiga toxin, the factor responsible for inducing life-threatening pathology in humans.

During the 1854 cholera outbreak in Florence, Italy, Filippo Pacini documented that the cause of the infection was a bacterium. This conclusion was also independently reached by John Snow during the 1854 cholera outbreak in London. By using an epidemiological method, Snow found that the infection spread through a polluted water network. Snow identified a water pump as the source of the disease. After removing the infected handle of this pump, the cases of cholera rapidly began to decrease.

The genus Salmonella is closely associated with foodborne outbreaks and animal diseases, and reports of antimicrobial resistance in Salmonella species are frequent.

Many public health laboratories across the world have implemented whole-genome sequencing (WGS) for the surveillance and outbreak detection of foodborne pathogens. PulseNet-affiliated laboratories have determined that most single-strain foodborne outbreaks are contained within 0–10 multi-locus sequence typing (MLST)-based allele differences and/or core genome single-nucleotide variants (SNVs).

This cross-sectional study was carried out to determine the common Gram-negative bacteria (GNB) contaminating veterinary clinic environments, and to evaluate the susceptibility of the isolates to commonly used antibiotics and biocides. A total of 62 swab samples were collected from different frequently touched surfaces in the 4 veterinary clinics visited. The samples were processed for isolation and identification of GNB using standard microbiological procedures.

Highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza viruses cause devastating outbreaks in farmed poultry with serious consequences for animal welfare and economic losses. Zoonotic infection of humans through close contact with H5N1 infected birds is often severe and fatal. England experienced an outbreak of H5N1 in turkeys in 1991 that led to thousands of farmed bird mortalities.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a global public health problem with about 257 million chronically infected people and over 887000 deaths annually. In this study, 32 whole HBV genomes of various genotypes were amplified from clinical isolates to create transfection clones. The clones were sequenced, and their biological properties characterized by transfecting linear HBV clones into HepG2 cells.

  Campylobacter jejuni   strains that produce sialylated lipooligosaccharides (LOS) can cause the immune-mediated disease Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS).

We investigated the evolution, phylogeny and antimicrobial resistance of Vibrio cholerae O1 isolates (VCO1) from Ghana.

Bacterial small RNAs (sRNAs) are important regulators of gene expression; however, the impact of natural mutations on sRNA functions has not been studied extensively.

Acute respiratory infections (ARIs) constitute one of the leading causes of antibiotic administration, hospitalization and death among children <5 years old. The upper respiratory tract microbiota has been suggested to explain differential susceptibility to ARIs and modulate ARI severity.

Human noroviruses (HuNoVs) are increasingly becoming the main cause of transmissible gastroenteritis worldwide, with hundreds of thousands of deaths recorded annually. Yet, decades after their discovery, there is still no effective treatment or vaccine. Efforts aimed at developing vaccines or treatment will benefit from a greater understanding of norovirus-host interactions, including the host response to infection.

Abstract

Non-typhoidal Salmonella enterica is an important gastrointestinal pathogen causing a considerable burden of disease. Resistance to third generation cephalosporins poses a serious threat for treatment of severe infections.

In Actinobacteria , protein O-mannosyl transferase (Pmt)-mediated protein O-glycosylation has an important role in cell envelope physiology. In S.

Introduction. Antibiotic use, particularly amoxicillin-clavulanic acid in dairy farming, has been associated with an increased incidence of AmpC-hyperproducing Escherichia coli .

Introduction. Biofilm formation and hemolysis are closely related to the pathogenicity of Staphylococcus aureus .

Vibrio cholerae the causative agent of cholera, uses a large number of coordinated transcriptional regulatory events to transition from its environmental reservoir to the host intestine, which is its preferred colonization site.

MSMEG_2295 is a TetR family protein encoded by the first gene of a Mycobacterium smegmatis (Msm) operon that expresses the gene for DinB2 (MSMEG_2294), a translesion DNA repair enzyme. We have carried out investigations to understand its function by performing DNA binding studies and gene knockout experiments.

Strain EAR8T is a root endophyte isolated from Arthrocnemum macrostachyum plants collected from the Odiel marshes, Huelva (Spain). It presented in vitro plant growth-promoting properties and improved the plant growth and heavy metal accumulation in polluted soils playing an important role in phytoremediation strategies.

  Salmonella enterica   serovar Infantis is the fifth most common   Salmonella   serovar isolated in England and Wales.

Enterobacterales from livestock are potentially important reservoirs for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to pass through the food chain to humans, thereby increasing the AMR burden and affecting our ability to tackle infections.