A Microarray Based Approach for the Identification of Common Foodborne Viruses

Ayodeji, Mobolanle; Kulka, Michael; Jackson, Scott A; Patel, Isha; Mammel, Mark; Cebula, Thomas A; Goswami, Biswendu B

Our results show that an oligonucleotide array incorporating thousands of probes representing genomes of multiple foodborne RNA viruses including multiple hepatitis A virus genotype strains and multiple coxsackievirus serotype (A and B) strains can be used to differentiate between virus members of either genus to identify the genotype/serotype of these viruses by array hybridization assay. Because the large number of probes can bind and detect labeled targets over a much larger area of the viral genomes, producing distinctive signal patterns for each genotype/serotype, the need for large scale sequencing is eliminated for this level of discrimination.