Whole Egg Consumption Downregulates Pre-Frontal Cortex Genes in Zucker Diabetic Fatty Rats

Abstract

Pantoea stewartii subsp. stewartii is the causal agent of the disease Stewart’s bacterial wilt of corn. P.s. subsp. stewartti has been listed in the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO) A2 quarantine list (EFSA 2019). As a result, most corn seed exported from the U.S. must be declared free of P.s. subsp. stewartti, either by field inspection or laboratory seed health testing. Although several methods have been developed for detection of Pss in corn seeds, the current laboratory testing methods (enzyme-linked immuno-sorbent assay [ELISA] and polymerase chain reaction [PCR]) still appear to be prone to false positive results, because they cannot distinguish P. s. subsp. stewartii from the closely related subspecies Pantoea stewartii subsp. indologenes (Block 2011, Pal et al, 2019). Primers have been developed previously to detect P. s. subsp. stewartii from P. s. subsp. indologenes. For the new qPCR to be approved for use under NSHS, optimization and interlaboratory validation of the test needed to be conducted. Addition of this tool to the NSHS method should greatly reduce false positives. The goal of this research was to use PCR as a follow-up step for positive ELISA results, to distinguish true positives from false positives.