Listeria unmasked

Washington-The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports thatresearchers now have important new information about the genetic makeupof Listeria.

This new information will help in the research of ways to reduce theincidence of food contamination and illness from this bacterium.

The project is a collaboration between USDA's Agricultural Research Serviceand The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Md. Similarto efforts to understand the structure of the human genome, the researchersbegan examining the complete genetic makeup of a Listeria monocytogenesserotype 4b strain in January. The researchers have now finished the initialphase, in which individual fragments of the genome have been examined. Thenext step is to assemble these fragments into a complete genomic map ofthe bacterium.