ARMONK, N.Y. and ITHACA, N.Y., June 23,
2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Cornell University, a leader in dairy research,
today announced a new collaboration using next-generation
sequencing combined with bioinformatics designed to help reduce the
chances that the global milk supply is impacted by safety breaches.
With the onset of this dairy project, Cornell
University has become the newest academic institution to
join the Consortium for Sequencing the Food Supply Chain, a food
safety initiative that includes IBM Research, Mars, Incorporated
and Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc.
"Through this partnership with Cornell
University, we are extending the Consortium work to a
broader range of ingredients, leveraging artificial intelligence
and machine learning, to gain new insights into how microorganisms
interact within a particular environment," said Jeff Welser, vice president and director, IBM
Research - Almaden.
The opportunity for improving food safety is large; the U.S.
Department of Agriculture estimates that Americans consume more
than 600 pounds of milk and milk-based products per person per
year. Fresh food such as meat, dairy, and produce represent a great
risk for food safety incidents.
Specifically, raw milk is the main ingredient used in
pasteurized milk for drinking, infant formula, cheese, yogurt and
other common grocery items. Normally, raw milk samples are tested
for a few specific groups of bacteria. However, the Consortium for
Sequencing the Food Supply Chain is using the community of microbes
or bacteria known as the microbiome to characterize the food
samples at an unprecedented resolution. By sequencing and analyzing
the DNA and RNA (genetic code) of food microbiomes, researchers
plan to create new tools that can help monitor raw milk to detect
anomalies that represent food safety hazards and possible
fraud.
Characterizing what is "normal" for a food ingredient can better
allow the observation of when something goes awry. Detecting
unknown anomalies is a challenge in food safety and serious
repercussions may arise due to contaminants that may never have
been seen in the food supply chain before.
"As a global leader in food safety and dairy research, we
are committed to using our multidisciplinary expertise to secure
the world's food supply against harmful microbial contamination,"
said Kathryn J. Boor, the Ronald P.
Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
"Bringing Cornell into a private-public partnership with IBM, a
world leader in technology and innovation, has the potential to
deliver transformative research in the area of food safety and
health."
While many food producers already have rigorous processes in
place to ensure food safety hazards are managed appropriately, this
pioneering application of genomics will be designed to enable a
deeper understanding and characterization of microorganisms on a
much larger scale than has previously been possible. Consortium
researchers will conduct several studies comparing the baseline
data of raw milk with known anomalies to help create proven models
that can be used for additional studies. They will continue to
provide innovative solutions that can potentially minimize the
chance that a food hazard will reach the final consumer and provide
a tool to assist against food fraud.
The Consortium for Sequencing the Food Supply Chain was
officially launched in January 2015
by IBM Research and Mars, Incorporated. Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc.
a global provider of life science research and clinical diagnostic
products, joined the Consortium in 2016. This collaborative food
safety initiative will leverage advances in next-generation
sequencing to further the understanding of what can help make food
safe. The consortium is conducting the largest-ever metagenomics
study to categorize and understand microorganisms and the factors
that influence their activity in various food matrices. This work
could eventually be extended into the larger context of the food
supply chain — from farm to fork — and, using artificial
intelligence and machine learning, may lead to new insights into
how microorganisms interact within a particular environment.
The research project will collect genetic data from the
microbiome of raw milk samples in a "real-world" scenario at
Cornell's Dairy Processing Plant and
farm in Ithaca, N.Y. The facility
is unusual in that it represents the full dairy supply chain – from
farm to processing to consumer. This initial data collection will
form a raw milk baseline and be used to further expand existing
Consortium bioinformatic analytical tools.
"As nature's most perfect food, milk is an excellent model for
studying the genetics of food. As a leader in genomics research,
the Department of Food Science anticipates this research
collaboration with IBM can lead to exciting opportunities to apply
findings to multiple food products in locations worldwide," said
Martin Wiedmann, Gellert Family
Professor in Food Safety and Cornell Institute for Food Systems
faculty fellow at Cornell's College of
Agriculture and Life Sciences.
"We are thrilled to collaborate with Cornell to develop new ways to help keep our food
supply safe before fraud or contamination hits by developing
advanced algorithms, applying machine learning and mathematical
modeling to sequence data," said Kristen
Beck, technical lead researcher for the Consortium for
Sequencing the Food Supply Chain, IBM Research - Almaden. "Safe
food is the first step toward human health. We're extremely
optimistic that with Cornell's
involvement in the Consortium we will make a difference in
improving not only food safety, but our overall health as
well."
For more information about the Consortium visit: Sequencing the
Food Supply Chain.
Photo Library: ttps://flic.kr/p/qG9b9B
About IBM Research
For more than seven decades, IBM
Research has defined the future of information technology with more
than 3,000 researchers in 12 labs located across six continents.
Scientists from IBM Research have produced six Nobel Laureates, 10
U.S. National Medals of Technology, five U.S. National Medals of
Science, six Turing Awards, 19 inductees in the National Academy of
Sciences and 20 inductees into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of
Fame. For more information about IBM Research, visit
www.ibm.com/research.
Contacts:
|
|
Caroline Yu
Vespi
|
Matt
Hayes
|
External Relations
Lead
|
Managing Editor &
Social Media Officer
|
IBM Research –
Almaden
|
Cornell College of
Agriculture & Life Sciences
|
cvespi@us.ibm.com
|
Matt.Hayes@cornell.edu
|
925-212-9184
|
607-255-2204
|
To view the original version on PR Newswire,
visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-research-and-cornell-university-to-use-genetic-sequencing-and-big-data-analytics-to-help-keep-global-milk-supply-safe-300478804.html
SOURCE IBM