University of Pennsylvania, Life Technologies develop new salmonella detection kit

The University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine and Life Technologies have developed a DNA-based Salmonella enteritidis detection kit, which has been Food and Drug Administration-approved for use with liquid eggs.
The kit, which took just over a year to finalize, returns results in 27 hours. Traditional laboratory tests take a minimum of 10 days.
Shelley Rankin, associate professor of microbiology at Penn Vet, said she initiated work to develop a new, quicker test after learning about the revised federal guidelines for egg quality assurance. She also said that her lab's work isn't complete. “I’m hoping that as we move along over the next couple years that we’ll improve this kit," she said. “There [are] some amazing techniques out there right now that might actually take this over at some point and allow us to do testing of a lot more samples than we test currently for a much-reduced cost. This is something my lab is going to be working on for several years to come.”