Cattle are naturally colonized by enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli within the gastrointestinal tract. The most notorious of the enterohemorrhagic E. coli is E. coli O157:H7, which can cause serious illness to humans if ingested. To ensure that the United States has a safe food supply, research is ongoing in pre-harvest food safety and pathogen intervention strategies. While advances in pre-harvest intervention strategies are encouraging, no method has proven to completely eliminate and/or control O157:H7. A key limitation to successful pathogen intervention strategies is the inability to track and monitor pathogens in a real-time fashion. Through the use of bioluminescent plasmids harboring the luxCDABE cassette, pathogen tracking could be a viable solution. Bioluminescent plasmids are capable of facilitating the tracking, pathogenesis and physical locations of pathogens, thus enabling researchers to have a better understanding of the pathogenic process.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MSSTATE/oai:scholarsjunction.msstate.edu:td-5937 |
| Date | 12 May 2012 |
| Creators | Duoss, Heather Ann |
| Publisher | Scholars Junction |
| Source Sets | Mississippi State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
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