MetaGenome Analytics, LLC"Uniting Food and Public Health Sectors with Next-Generation DNA Sequencing"

Serotyping is one of the oldest methods of sub-typing and has been used extensively for monitoring trends in transmission patterns of foodborne pathogens such as Salmonella enterica. Pathogens such as E. coli O157:H7 are actually defined by serotype and it is commonly used as a critical step in detection methods. With >2,500known serotypes in Salmonella enterica, traditional serotyping is a tedious method requiring a large number of anti-sera that are extensively quality-controlled. NGS applications now exist for serotyping by sequencing, which bypasses the need for expensive and labile anti-sera and instead infers serotype from DNA sequences of multiple genes that are known to encode serotype-conferring antigens. MetaGenome Analytics SeroTyping applications (MGA-ST) automate the highly complex computational approaches needed to convert NGS data into serotype predictions.