Wastewater treatment plants are considered one of the main sources and reservoirs of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This study investigated the prevalence of 8 different phenotypes of AMR, multi-drug resistant (MDR), and extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBL) producing E. coli in 17 wastewater treatment plants across Oregon in winter and summer of 2019...
United States Department of Agriculture-Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS) guidelines for beef jerky processing support producers' ability to satisfy the performance standard requirements for achieving a 5-log reduction in Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7. The first compliance guide for jerky processors was created in response to several Salmonella outbreaks...
About 48 million cases of Foodborne illnesses (FBIs) are estimated to occur every year in the US. These are diseases caused by contamination of foods with bacteria, viruses, protozoa, parasites and toxic chemicals. Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs) are an important health-care and community associated problem. Since C. difficile spores have...
Reports of foodborne outbreaks have increased in the last decade, posing a public health risk to consumers. In an attempt to mitigate this risk, the newly established Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) takes a preventive rather than reactive approach to food safety. Under FSMA, producers are required to validate...
Foodborne outbreaks involving fresh produce have been on the rise since the late 1990's. Pathogens such as Salmonella spp. and Escherichia coli are prevalent in agricultural environments and commonly travel between farms via irrigation water. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) has placed an increased emphasis on microbiological standards of...
This thesis reports on computational research in two different areas. I first discuss the Min-protein system found within Escherichia coli. Following this I discuss an extended investigation into improving free energy functionals that are used within Classical Density Functional Theory in order to model water. Chapter 2 examines the dynamics...
Peptide-phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomers (PPMOs) are synthetic DNA mimics that bind and silence gene targets. Through designing PPMOs that silence essential or resistance genes in pathogens, these antisense oligomers could be utilized as novel antimicrobials. Towards this end, my thesis employed minimum inhibitory concentration assays (MICs) to identify PPMOs capable of...
The Min protein system in Escherichia coli helps the cell division process by identifying the center of the cell [1, 7]. This system has been modeled succesfully computationally under standard conditions. There has been recent experimental interest in the cell division process for significantly perturbed cell shapes. We take the...
The purpose of this study was to isolate and characterize any
segregants of the heterogenotes formed from sexduction by an F'
donor. Following the mating of F' W4520, carrying an F' gal₁⁺
gal₂⁺ factor, with W3350, a gal₁⁻ gal₂⁻ recipient, a number of
recombinant clones were picked and examined for...