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DNA Technology Will Help Track Illness More Accurately, Quickly

wired.com

The next time there is an outbreak of food poisoning, the state health officials have a tool to track the source of the illness more quickly and accurately.

The New York State Department of Health says new genome sequencing equipment can be used to track the DNA of pathogens often associated with food borne illness, such as salmonella, listeria or e-coli.

"The real benefit of the whole genome sequencing is that it allows us to pinpoint much more accurately the source, because it's much more discriminatory than the current technology," says Bill Wolfgang, a scientist at the NYSDOH Wadsworth Center Laboratories. He says in a case study, researchers were able to sequence and analyze salmonella samples in eight days, and the lab has since made the process even quicker.

The new technology can also be used to trace the source of transmissible diseases such as tuberculosis.

Beth Adams joined WXXI as host of Morning Edition in 2012 after a more than two-decade radio career. She was the longtime host of the WHAM Morning News in Rochester. Her career also took her from radio stations in Elmira, New York, to Miami, Florida.