Genomic Techniques to understand Campylobacter persistence in chicken farms

Bacterial infection by Campylobacter kills hundreds of people and is responsible for approximately 280,000 cases of food poisoning annually. Given 70% of supermarket chicken has been found to be contaminated with Campylobacter - clearly there is a pressing need to better understand the ecology of persistence on the poultry farm, which remains poorly understood. This project seeks to study factors associated with infectious disease persistence in the farm using the latest microbiological and molecular biological techniques, including next generation sequencing. The student can expect to gain considerable experience in aspects of microbiology, microbial genomics, bioinformatics and molecular ecology.