Thomas S. Whittam
John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Bacterial Evolution
Ph.D., University of Arizona, 1981
Department of Food Science & Human Nutrition, Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics
194 Food Safety Building
Office Telephone: 517-432-3588
whittam@msu.edu
Research Website
Microbiological Food Safety, Zoonotic Origin of Food and Waterborne Disease, E. coli O157:H7, Evolutionary Genomics of Bacteria, Emerging Infectious Diseases
My laboratory studies the evolution and emergence of pathogenic bacteria with special emphasis on food and waterborne infectious diseases. Through the analysis of molecular polymorphisms, we are investigating the genetic and phenotypic changes underlying the origin and spread of new pathogens. This research has elucidated the ancestry of Escherichia coli O157:H7, a newly emerged pathogen that has caused large outbreaks of foodborne illness. The long-term objective of this work, which involves collaboration with scientists from around the world, is to understand the global distribution of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) and other pathogenic Escherichia and the dispersion of specific virulence genes in human populations and animal reservoirs. We maintain the STEC Reference Center that supplies strains and information to participating researchers. The STEC Center supports the multilocus sequence typing of pathogenic E. coli and Shigella and the EcMLST database. The project is supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the NIH through Food and Waterborne Diseases Integrated Research Network, Microbiology Research Unit under Research Contract N01-AI-30058.
In collaboration with the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH), we are also investigating the prevalence of STEC in Michigan through an active surveillance system established by the MDCH. We are analyzing clinical STEC isolates for allelic variation at conserved genes by DNA sequencing. Future work will focus on assessing whether specific genotypes are associated with other bacterial or host characteristics (e.g., age, gender, disease severity). This project has been funded in part by the Food and Waterborne Integrated Research Network, Microbiology Research Unit under NIH Research Contract N01-AI-30058.
Representative Publications
Bergholz, T. M. and T. S. Whittam. 2007. Variation in acid resistance among enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli in a simulated gastric environment. Journal of Applied Microbiology 102:352-362.
Lacher, D. W., H. Steinsland, M. S. Donnenberg, and T. S. Whittam. 2007. Molecular evolution of typical enteropathogenic Escherichia coli: Clonal analysis by multilocus sequence typing and virulence gene allelic profiling. Journal of Bacteriology 189:342-350.
Alland, D., D. W. Lacher, M. H. Hazbon, A. S. Motiwala, W. Qi, R. D. Fleischmann, and T. S. Whittam. 2007. The role of large sequence polymorphisms in generating genomic diversity in clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and their utility in phylogenetic analysis. Journal of Clinical Microbiology 45:39-46.
Zhang, W., W. Qi., T. J. Albert., A. S. Motiwala., D. Alland., E. K. Hyytia-Trees, E. M. Ribot, P. I. Fields, T. S. Whittam, and B. Swaminathan. 2006. Probing genomic diversity and evolution of Escherichia coli O157 by single-nucleotide polymorphisms. Genomic Research 16:757-67.