UCD Centre for Food Safety Conference on E. sakazakii on January 22nd and 23rd in Dublin, Ireland.
For those interested in E. sakazakii, the place to be in the middle of January in Dublin, Ireland. See attached brochure.
The UCD Centre for Food Safety is engaged in the following research:
a. Development of an efficient capture-detection strategy for E. sakazakii in desiccated milk product and other base powders. This will be evaluated against the standardized US-FDA method requiring a 5-day test.
b. Determine the genetic relationship(s) by Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis (PFGE), among a large collection of Enterobacter sakazakii from desiccated product, the processing plant environment and fatal cases of infection. Define isolate biotypes among these groups based on computational evaluation of macrorestriction DNA profiles.
c. Evaluate the thermotolerance characteristics among representatives of the biotypes as identified by PFGE.
d. Describe the molecular mechanisms contributing to the organism’s ability to survive under extreme dry-stress conditions.
Enterobacter sakazakii is a Gram-negative bacillus and a member of the family Enterobacteriaceae, genus Enterobacter. E. sakazakii is an emerging pathogen associated with meningitis and necrotisingenterocolitis in immunocompromised infants. Case mortality rates vary from 40-80%; with the majority of those who survive Enterobacter associated meningitis (94%) developing an irreversible neurological sequalae.
