Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis for Food Safety and Agricultural-Related Research

The PFGE will be housed in the principal investigator's laboratory at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Mississippi State University (MSU) and be available for use by other MSU research scientists. Dr. Wang has been identified as the faculty researcher who would be in charge of the PFGE. Dr. Wang and her technician will provide instruction on proper use of the PFGE and be responsible for overseeing the day-to-day use and operation of the PFGE.
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Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis system is a powerful tool to discriminate food-borne pathogens from environmental strains and has tremendous use for molecular biology research. Research scientists at MSU who are working on food safety projects as well as on other agricultural research have great interest in using this instrument to excel their research to a national level. The primary use of the PFGE will be to perform molecular epidemiological studies on food-borne pathogens such as Listeria, Salmonella, Escherichia coli, and Vibrio, etc. The goals of principle investigators are to 1) evaluate the potential role of L. monocytogenes isolates from catfish in the epidemiology of human listeriosis and identify the potential sources of L. monocytogenes contamination in catfish products and 2) characterize the drug resistant E. coli strains in swine farms. Other projects the PFGE will be used for include bacterial typing; protein expression of food-borne pathogens subjected to environmental changes, determination of the presence and degree of strain variation in Flavobacterium columnare, production of Mycoplasma gallisepticum genomic library; and a study on DNA replication in E. coli. This instrument has great application in food safety as well as on other agricultural-related research and certainly will increase our competitiveness for seeking extramural funding.