Molecular barcode of foodborne disease precursors to improve biosanitizer performance - Phase II

全球人口增长、全球化和新的生活标准极大地改变了食品市场。食品经过长距离运输、储存和加工后才分发给消费者，导致食品安全问题的出现。食品诊断目前依赖于模式病原体的检测和微生物负荷的定量。很少有人尝试开发更全面的诊断工具，根据食品基质的非生物和生物特征提供食品对病原体敏感性的早期信号。在之前的NSERC-Engage资助中，我们的团队证明了与奇亚籽相关的微生物组合是有组织的，可以提供外来肠杆菌科污染风险的早期信号。在这里，我们提出了第二阶段的前一个项目，以表征从不同国家进口的大麻种子的微生物组。新鲜种子和调理种子使用Agri-Neo Inc.开发的专有工艺进行去污。将进行取样和分析使用共现网络分析的组合，我们试图确定关键的微生物物种，促进或阻碍潜在的食源性病原体占领大麻生态位。拮抗菌和协同菌的鉴定将导致遗传条形码指示剂的发展，以评估食品对病原体的敏感性。这一战略可以彻底改变调节食品加工处理和质量控制，同时有助于确定进入公共市场的进口食品的商业价值，降低受污染食品的损失和召回警告的发生率。

Increasing global population, globalization, and new living standards have considerably changed the foodmarket. Food is transported over long distances, stored and processed before being distributed to consumers,resulting in the emergence of food safety issues. Food diagnostic currently relies on the detection of modelpathogens and quantification of microbial load. Very few attempts have been made to develop more holisticdiagnostic tools, providing early signal of food susceptibility to pathogens, based on the abiotic and bioticfeatures of food matrices. In a previous NSERC-Engage grant, our team demonstrated that microbialassemblages associated with chia seeds are organized and could provide early signal of contamination risk byallochthonous Enterobacteriaceae. Here we propose a second phase to that previous project to characterize themicrobiome of hemp seeds imported from different countries. Fresh seeds and conditioned seedsdecontaminated using a proprietary process developed by Agri-Neo Inc. will be sampled and analyzed. Using acombination of co-occurrence network analyses, we seek to identify keystone microbial species that facilitateor impede occupation of hemp ecological niche by potential foodborne pathogens. The identification ofantagonist and synergetic species will lead to the development of a genetic barcode indicator to evaluate foodsusceptibility to pathogens. This strategy could revolutionize conditioning food process treatments and qualitycontrol, while helping to determine the commercial values of imported food destined to public markets, lowerthe loss of contaminated food products and the incidence of recall warnings.