Publicly available food pathogen genome database in the works
The FDA, University of California at Davis, Agilent Technologies Inc. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are collaborating to create a public database of 100,000 foodborne pathogen genomes to help speed identification of bacteria responsible for foodborne outbreaks.
The database will provide a road map for developing tests to identify pathogens and provide information about the origin of the pathogen. The tests have the potential to significantly reduce the typical public health response time in outbreaks of foodborne illness to days instead of weeks.