The food and drink we consume have to pass strict quality controls. Nevertheless, these measures are not always sufficient, given that sometimes certain foodstuffs can still give rise to food poisoning, most often caused by micro-organisms. The Salmonella bacterium is undoubtedly one of the best known of these. At the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) they are developing a new, rapid-detection system (within 24 hours) for Salmonella.
It is currently a laborious process to detect Salmonella in food. An analytical study is carried out in the laboratory by means of conventional microbiological techniques and the results take a week, a delay which creates problems for the food industry
In 2002 the Department of Immunology, Microbiology and Parasitology at the UPV/EHU together with the company, Laboratorios Bromatológicos Araba, and the Leioa Technological Centre, decided to carry out collaborative work in order to try to develop new, faster methods for Salmonella detection.
**Genetic methods**
A requisite for such genetic methods is to know the genome of this bacterium well. Fortunately there are several strains of Salmonella which have been totally sequenced. It is also known that there are certain genes that are specific to Salmonella that are not found in any other bacteria nor, for that matter, in any other living being. Thus, if we detect these genes...
Whole article: "http://www.sciencedaily.com":[ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070208131714.htm]
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The emerging field of metagenomics, where the DNA of entire communities of microbes is studied simultaneously, presents the greatest opportunity -- perhaps since the invention of the microscope -- to revolutionize understanding of the microbial world, says a new report from the National Research Council (29.3.2007)
The aplication of functional genomics for food microbiology -
The methods functional genomics (it includes genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics) are expected to be crucial in food microbiology, especially in guiding predictive modelling of behaviour of spoilage and pathogenic micororganisms (21.12.2006)
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Plasmids of Salmonella enterica vary in size from 2 to more than 200 kb (1.3.2006)
