Location: Poultry Microbiological Safety and Processing Research Unit
Project Number: 6040-32000-079-017-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2022
End Date: Oct 30, 2024
Objective:
1. Evaluate the antimicrobial-resistant staphylococcal population in the bacterial microbiome from poultry.
2. Identify and characterize potential poultry specific signatures from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) to differentiate from livestock-associated MRSA (LA-MRSA).
Approach:
In Objective 1, all species of staphylococci will be isolated from conventional and “No Antibiotics Ever (NAE)” retail poultry products. Isolates will be tested against a panel of antimicrobials and the bacterial genomes analyzed using whole-genome sequencing. As little is known about non-aureus staphylococcal species, this objective will primarily focus on those species. The goals of this objective are to determine: 1) prevalence of poultry staphylococcal species, and 2) non-aureus reservoirs of antimicrobial resistance genes that could ultimately be transferred to Staphylococcus aureus.
The goal of Objective 2 is to identify genetic markers that are unique to MRSA from poultry useful for development of rapid screening tests for on-farm or in-plant testing of poultry products. Experiments in this objective would focus specifically on MRSA from Objective 1. Genome-wide association studies will be performed to compare poultry MRSA to those classified as LA-MRSA to determine differences between the two groups.
