The Ministry of Food & Drug Safety designated the Food-borne Pathogen Omics Research Center as its Research Center in March 2014 to prevent food poisoning accidents and establish response plans for such outbreaks by securing and accumulating information on genetic substances, transcriptome and meta-genome existing in food that often cause food poisoning. With approximately 60 researchers who form the core researchers’ group and excellent research infrastructure, the Center is devoted to developing technologies and establishing policies that will assure food safety.

In order to prevent large-scale food poisoning accidents caused by mutated or unknown harmful microbes and to overcome the limits of analyzing the causes of food poisoning through incubation-based existing microbiological testing methods, the Center takes a genome- and metagenome-approach to the analysis of microbes and microbiota contained in major animal and vegetable food that frequently cause food poisoning. At the same time, the Center plans to respond to food poisoning accidents quickly and actively by building a high-quality database based on the information related to the metagenome, genome and transcriptome of food poisoning bacilli contained in animal and vegetable food that are the most common culprits behind food poisoning.