NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Illumina today said that it has received a $17 million contract from the US Food and Drug Administration to provide sequencing systems and reagents for food safety testing.
Under the five-year contract, Illumina will supply its MiSeq systems and reagents for performing whole-genome analysis on produce and produce-related environmental Salmonella and shigatoxigenic E. coli isolates.
Illumina said in a statement that the FDA already has several MiSeq systems deployed in its labs and is building its existing capacity as part of a proof-of-concept initiative. In addition, it said in the short-term the FDA is looking to collect data that is crucial to source-tracking Salmonella that may be involved in future produce-related outbreaks.
Sequence data collected at the FDA labs will be uploaded in real-time to the National Center for Biotechnology Information curated database and will provide early proof of concept for using whole-genome sequencing for pathogen detection, identification and traceback, said Illumina.