Research:
Food Science -
Research Interest
Research Mission
Newly emerging stress-hardened and antimicrobial resistant subpopulations of foodborne bacterial pathogens, Listeria monocytogenes, Campylobacter, Vibrio, E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella for safety of raw, raw-further processed and ready-to-eat food products.
Research Interests
• Microbial Stress-Adaptation
• Resistance to Antimicrobial Treatments at Processing
• Antibiotic Resistance
• Immunological and Molecular Diagnostics for Viable Cells
• Virulence of Stress-Hardened Cells
• Natural Antimicrobials and Emerging Food Processing Technologies
• Interdisciplinary Research Needs on Foodborne Bacterial Pathogens
Current Research Program
My lab’s focus is in understanding how foodborne pathogenic bacteria sense, adapt, resist and recover from different food processing stresses and antimicrobials in foods of animal and plant origin and consists of the following five objectives:
(1) Quantitative modeling of their survival, growth, persistence and ecological fitness of stress-hardened and antimicrobial resistant foodborne bacterial pathogens in various food products and environments.
(2) Induction of cold tolerance and subsequent interactions with other stress environments in different foodborne bacterial pathogens.
(3) Inactivation models for destruction of stress-adapted and antimicrobial resistant foodborne bacterial pathogens in various food products by combing newly discovered antimicrobials and emerging food processing technologies.
(4) Improving methodologies for isolation, detection, and enumeration of injured, stress-hardened, viable, and antimicrobial resistant foodborne bacterial pathogen subpopulations surviving in foods and environments using a combination of cultural, immunological and molecular tools.
(5) Identifying specific genomic, proteomic, and metabolic regulatory mechanisms governing specific stress-response adaptation and antimicrobial resistance of foodborne bacterial pathogens.
Also, I have an active research program on new monoclonal antibody production for foodborne bacterial pathogens, immunodiagonstics and in developing novel therapeutic agents for Biodefense Category B priority pathogens.
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