Each year there are nearly 50 million cases of food poisoning in the United States, according to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) press release. The FDA has teamed up with several organizations to create a database that will help public officials handle such outbreaks more efficiently.
The initiative has been named the 100K Genome Project. Over the next five years, researchers will sequence the genomes of about 100,000 foodborne pathogens, including salmonella, listeria, and E. coli. The information will be available in a public database.
“This important project will harness the cutting-edge technology of genome sequencing to advance our understanding of and response to foodborne outbreaks,” said FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., in the press release. “FDA is pleased to contribute scientific and technical expertise necessary to create and maintain this foodborne pathogen database which will be fully accessible and have long-lasting impact on protecting public health.”
