As part of its commitment to the Midwest Big Data Hub spoke in Digital Agriculture, UNL’s Quantitative Life Sciences Initiative, recently selected "Support System for Developing Veterinary Diagnostic Tools to Detect Antimicrobial Resistance in Food-producing Animals" for seed funding.
Submitted by Dr. Bing Wang, Assistant Professor of Food Science & Technology and Adjunct Professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, on behalf of the team members of Dr. Dustin Loy at the Nebraska Veterinary Diagnostic Center, Dr. Ashu Guru at the 4-H Youth Development and Biological Systems Engineering and Dr. Jean-Jack Riethoven at the Center for Biotechnology, the funding will support the project through December 2018.
The long-term goal of the study is to improve the antibiotic stewardship by facilitating a faster development of rapid detection methods for AMR in food-producing animals. Objectives include enhancing the automation process of data analysis for the real-time PCR method development and developing a user-friendly interface to transform expertise-required data analysis process into a self-service application in Nebraska Veterinary Diagnostic Center. The expected outcome will be a tool to support a faster development of AMR rapid detection methods for veterinary diagnostic laboratories in Nebraska and other regions.