Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) is emerging as the molecular epidemiology platform of choice for bacterial agents  implicated in human foodborne disease.  In the United States, coordinated efforts between the U.S. FDA,  USDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now include WGS-based data of Listeria, Salmonella and other pathogens  during outbreak investigations as well as in routine surveillance. Similar initiatives are being developed and implemented in other nations. These developments are unprecedented  not only in the sheer amount of WGS information that is being collected and the real-time nature of the collection and use of WGS data (e.g., while an outbreak is being investigated)  but also in the fact that  the archived sequenced data are  open-access, free of charge, to a diverse  community of stakeholders that includes academia, industry, and regulatory agencies. The objective of this symposium is to present cutting-edge developments in WGS-based molecular epidemiology and to address the capacity of WGS and omics platforms stemming from it, e.g., epigenetic analysis and global transriptome profiling, to help address the following  long-standing  query, of key interest  to the entire food safety community: are there intra-specific differences in human virulence among different strains of foodborne pathogens, and how can such differences  be best identified and interpreted? The symposium will focus on uses and capacity of WGS and related omics-derived  data to  complement epidemiological  trend analysis, targeted molecular biologic  studies and  lab-based virulence assessments, in order to guide and  inform detection and elucidation of  strain-specific differences in the ability of  major pathogens to cause human foodborne disease.

Presentations