Our project to sequence the genomes of 100,000 pathogen bad boys and put them in the public domain has finally gone public. Amazing how many months it took to put the press release out there. 100K Genome Project Access to these DNA sequences should allow us to construct molecular assays to identify food-borne pathogens. That will be a significant advance from using the bunny antibody techniques for serovar identification that were developed early in the last century and still in use today. If the identity of a food-borne pathogen can be determined in hours and not weeks, that will trim weeks off the time it takes to trace-back the source of the food poisoning to the farm or factory. Our next meeting is in two weeks, and we will all be proud to have this out there.
It's a fine thing for my company to sponsor. My manager offered me this position in the Food Team a couple of years ago. A few months after that, his father sickened and died from food poisoning in a few days. It's not always all about the corporate bottom line.
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