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Technician Sharon
Horn and microbiologist William Miller prepare samples of Campylobacter
for automated analysis of DNA sequence. The monitor shows the sequence of a DNA
sample run earlier. Click the image for more information about
it.
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"Bad-Guy" Bacterium's Genetic Structure
Probed
By Marcia
Wood October 19, 2006
Inner workings of a food-poisoning organism called Campylobacter
lari have been uncovered in greater detail than ever before by Agricultural
Research Service (ARS) scientists in
California. Their forays into the genetic makeup, or genome, of this
little-known pathogen reveal new details about the structure, or sequence, of
its genes.
Research microbiologist
William
G. Miller of the agency's
Produce
Safety and Microbiology Research Unit led the investigation, working
forward from a rough draft of the genome prepared earlier for ARS by
The Institute for Genomic Research,
Rockville, Md. Miller is based at the ARS
Western
Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif.
C. lari is a cousin of the better-known C. jejuni,
another "bad-guy" bacterium. C. jejuni causes millions of cases of
diarrhea every year, according to Miller. Food poisoning outbreaks occurring in
some other countries have been attributed to C. lari and have attracted
the attention of U.S. food safety researchers and public health professionals.
The new knowledge about the structure of C. lari genes could
open the door to innovative strategies that snafu the microbe's ability to
infect us.
Read
more about this and other ARS food safety research in the October 2006
issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
ARS is the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.