An official website of the United States government.
<p>The goals of the proposals are:
<ol><li>To demonstrate use of the newly developed molecular subtyping test to show epidemiological relationship among isolates of SE.</li>
<li>To carry out a validation of the test procedure by applying it to a large number of SE isolates (n = 1,000) and develop quantitative parameters of test performance.</li>
<li>To carry out inter-laboratory test validation</li>
<li>To construct a "Canadian map of SE" using molecular subtyping tool to trace, establish relatedness and identify transmission pathways of isolates found in various sources such as retail poultry products, live poultry, poultry production environment, hatchery, animal feed, wildlife, and humans).</li></ol> </p>
<p>In summary, the successful completion of the proposal should provide a validated tool that can be used to accurately and reliably monitor, trace and establish relationships or a lack thereof, among isolates of Salmonella Enteritidis. This tool will improve the control of SE.</p>
<p>Current mitigation strategies to deal with sources of foodborne Salmonella Enteritidis (SE) outbreaks, e.g., food recall, rely on molecular subtyping methods such as pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and phage typing. Both tests show low discriminatory power and sometimes poor reproducibility mainly because of the unprecedented, high genetic relatedness among SE isolates. A previous OMAFRA-funded project (FS090507/FS6080) on whole genome analysis led to the identification of single nucleotide polymorphism among SE isolates, and has resulted in the development of a tool previously unavailable: an inexpensive, rapid, robust and highly discriminatory test for SE, designated as SE-SNP-PCR. The new objectives are (a) to use the SE-SNP-PCR to provide laboratory evidence of relatedness among SE isolates deemed to have epidemiological relationships (b) validate the test, and (c) carry out interlaboratory testing to verify test reproducibility. A validated SE-SNP-PCR will be available to laboratories and food safety managers tasked with SE control.</p>