Welcome to PathogenTracker - the Cornell Food Safety Laboratory Bacterial Strains WWW Database Project

PathogenTracker 2.0 is now online at www.pathogentracker.net. PathogenTracker has been developed as an innovative WWW-based tool for information exchange on bacterial subtypes and strains and for studies on bacterial biodiversity and strain diversity. The current core strain database has been assembled by Dr. Kathryn Boor's and Dr. Martin Wiedmann's research groups at Cornell, but we hope and anticipate that members of the worldwide research community will contribute their data to this database to allow open data exchange and to facilitate large scale analyses and studies on bacterial biodiversity. Our goal is that this database system will ultimately be used similar to GenBank and that any subtypes reported in peer reviewed publications will also be deposited into PathogenTracker to allow open exchange of subtyping data and access to primary research data.

This database currently allows access to genetic, phenotypic and source information of a collection of foodborne and zoonotic pathogens and food spoilage organisms. Major organisms represented in our database include Listeria monocytogenes,Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Pseudomonas spp., and Streptococcus agalactiae The database contains DNA subtyping information (e.g., ribotype images), DNA sequence information, and phenotypic information (e.g., Biolog data, serotypes) for bacterial isolates collected by Dr. Kathryn Boor's and Dr. Martin Wiedmann's research groups at Cornell and their collaborators.

An initial prototype of this web-based library and search engine has been developed by Xiaozheng Zhong, David Wang, Joe Cheng-Yu Huang, Thibet Rungrotkityot, Jian-Ning Janet Cheng, Ernie Ho, as a CS 501 project under the project name "Pathogen Tracker". The development of the library search engine was performed in collaboration with Steven Cai, Michael Chung, Roger Jagoda and Martin Wiedmann. Development of Pathogen Tracker 2.0 was conducted by Dr. Qi Sun (Computational Biology Services Unit, Cornell University), Steven Cai (BS Cornell 00, MS Cornell 02), Hongsheng Tang (MS Binghamton University), Mike Chung (BS 02 Cornell), Mike Bohlander (BS 03 Cornell), and Martin Wiedmann, with technical support from Lucy Walle (Cornell Theory Center).

Development of this strain collection and database has been and is supported by USDA-NRI (Award No. 99-35201-8074 to M. Wiedmann), USDA Special Resarch Grants (Award No. 2001-34459-10296 and 2002-34459-11758 to M. Wiedmann), and by Dairy Management Inc. (through a grant to Kathryn Boor). In addition, the American Meat Institute Foundation has provided critical assistance in support of this project. The website of PathogenTracker 2.0 is hosted by Cornell Theory Center, which provides computational resources and support for the project.

Cornell University administers numerous research centers of major national importance and is the federally designated land grant institution for New York State. As such, its faculty and staff have carried forth cutting-edge research, outreach, and instructional programming for over 120 years. It is important to note that research and development at Cornell receives considerable support from New York State Legistature and New York Federal Delegation.
http://assembly.state.ny.us
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For press coverage on PathogenTracker, please check:
Food-Borne Bug Hunter
Novel database that tracks path of virulent bacteria via the web is developed by consortium of Cornell students

If you have any questions or if you would like additional information please e-mail Martin Wiedmann.