Investigation of the molecular basis of Salmonella Typhimurium Intestinal persistence

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Decreasing the prevalence of Salmonella in animals at slaughter is important to controlling Salmonella food-borne disease because it is the primary risk factor for their introduction into the food chain. Approximately 100,000 cases of Salmonella are reported in the EU each year of which nearly half require hospitalisation and over 100 result in death (EFSA, 2012). The two primary risk factors for human disease are the consumption of table eggs and pork meat, although most transmission can be ultimately traced back to fecal contamination of food products. Salmonella encodes specific mechanisms to persistently colonise the gut of animals that are distinct from mechanisms involved in initial colonisation2. While a large body of literature describes the mechanisms by which Salmonella attaches to and invades enterocytes of the mammalian gut to establish infection, comparatively little is known about how Salmonella persists in the intestinal lumen and associated tissue. This program of work will identify the full repertoire of intestinal persistence factors of Stm and then focus on the elucidation of the mechanism by which two previously identified intestinal persistence factors ShdA and MisL, contribute to intestinal persistence. The combination of a genome-wide and focused mechanistic analysis will significantly push this area of research toward the ability to design novel intervention strategies to decrease carriage of Salmonella by livestock at slaughter.

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