Overview
The STEC Center is designed to facilitate research on the Shiga-toxin producing E. coli by providing a standard reference collection of well-characterized strains and central on-line accessible databases. The center was established to :
Act as a repository for deposition of STEC from new outbreaks and environments as they are identified.
Establish and distribute sets of STEC reference strains for use by investigators.
Conduct rapid characterization of STEC based on genetic markers of clonal identity and virulence genes; sequencing of flagellin and toxin genes will be performed in order to subtype strains.
Make typing data of STEC available to the scientific community by developing and maintaining on-line databases.
The STEC Center is based at National Food Safety and Toxicology Center (NFSTC) at Michigan State University (MSU). The project is supported by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of National Institutes of Health (NIH)
through Food and Waterborne Diseases Integrated Research Network (FWD IRN),
Microbiology Research Unit (MRU) (Research contract N01-AI-30058), Michigan State University (Principal Investigator is Dr. Thomas S. Whittam). The STEC Isolate and Literature databases were originally designed and developed by Robert Mangold. They were re-organized and are currently maintained by Weihong Qi, who also design, implement and maintain the MRU website and the EcMLST system.
| 
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
Food and Waterborne Diseases Integrated Research Network (FWD IRN)
Microbiology Research Unit (MRU)
Reference Center to Facilitate the Study of Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia Coli