Come and Get It, Early Risers!
posted on June 7, 2009
New this year, early risers get the opportunity for some bonus education. Four Sunrise Sessions have been added to the Scientific Program—two on Sunday, June 7, and two on Tuesday, June 9. Sunday’s bonus sessions are as follows.
DNA techniques for food pathogens
Session 1, Sunday, 7–8 a.m.
Room 207C
Track: Science Fundamentals
This session will provide the fundamentals of molecular biology and cell physiology as they apply to development, implementation, and interpretation of molecular detection and subtyping approaches to detect and characterize foodborne pathogens. Molecular subtyping approaches to characterize foodborne pathogens include DNA band-based methods that generate fragment pattern data or “DNA fingerprint” types as well as DNA sequence-based approaches, which rely on generation of DNA sequence data for one or more loci in order to differentiate isolates belonging to a given pathogen. Although DNA band-based subtyping approaches (e.g., pulsed field gel electrophoresis and ribotyping) have been most routinely employed to characterize foodborne pathogens, a wealth of DNA sequencing data is now available for foodborne pathogens. In addition, recently emerged, next-generation sequencing technologies promise increased available DNA sequence data for foodborne pathogens, where multiple genome sequences for a given pathogen can be compared to develop improved molecular detection assays and novel DNA sequence-based subtyping methods.
Case studies—risk assessment for food allergens
Session 2, Sunday, 7–8 a.m.
Room 207D
Track: Applied Science
Food allergies have emerged in recent years as a serious public health concern for the food industry, and in response, the food industry has had to increasingly perform risk assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of allergen control programs and to drive appropriate labeling decisions. In this interactive session, attendees will participate in the decision-making processes for risk assessment surrounding real-world case studies. Attendees will be expected to have a fundamental knowledge of food allergies and allergen detection methodologies. Participants will learn the benefits of quantitative information and how to apply it as part of the risk assessment process.