Award details

Microbial Survival in the Food Chain

Reference	BBS/E/F/000PR10349
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Mark Webber
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Professor Ian Charles, Dr Matthew Gilmour, Dr Andrew Grant, Dr Falk Hildebrand, Dr Nicol Janecko, Professor Robert Kingsley, Dr Gemma Langridge, Professor Alison Mather, Professor Justin O'Grady, Professor John Wain, Professor Cynthia Whitchurch, Professor Brendan Wren
Institution	Quadram Institute Bioscience
Department	Quadram Institute Bioscience Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	9,001,909
Status	Current
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/2018
End date	31/03/2023
Duration	47 months

Abstract

The ‘Microbial Survival in the Food Chain’ theme aims to understand the genetic basis by which three major foodborne pathogens; Campylobacter, Salmonella and Listeria are able to survive and adapt to food chain relevant stresses. We will use a combination of large scale transposon mutant libraries, transcriptomics, Chip-Seq and targeted evolution experiments as well as classical molecular microbiology to identify genes and mutations that allow survival in the food chain. We will further define the genotype-phenotype linkage by using ‘Genome Scale Metabolic Reconstruction’ models which will help identify the key pathways involved in survival. We have been and will continue to refine transposon mutagenesis techniques to allow all genes in a genome to be assayed for impacts on any particular stress – our enhanced TraDIS method includes outward facing, inducible promoters allowing the impact of over and under-expression of essential genes on fitness to be assayed for the first time. This approach will be applied to all three pathogens of interest. The ability of strains to survive in a range of food chain relevant stresses including different temperatures, desiccation, acid stress, salt stress, nitrite stress, biocides will be investigated as well as biofilm formation on relevant surfaces (including organic and inorganic). We have developed a biofilm evolution model which will allow us to investigate biofilm specific pathways of adaptation to stresses which will reveal context specific genes involved in adaptation. We will use both well understood reference strains and epidemiologically relevant representative isolates (decided in conjunction with work in theme 1 of this ISP) to ensure data is as applicable as possible to real-world scenarios.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Microbial Food Safety, Microbiology
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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