University of Otago biochemistry senior lecturer Dr Paul Gardner said the software tool, created by a scientist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute (United Kingdom, the University of Otago, and the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research, Germany), greatly speeds up the process for identifying the genetic changes underlying new invasive types of Salmonella that are a greater concern to public health.
He said there were many different types of Salmonella bacteria - some cause food poisoning known as gastrointestinal salmonella, and other more severe types like Salmonella typhi cause typhoid fever.
Dr Gardner said the method correctly classified which Salmonella types were going to be invasive and which ones were not, by analysing genome sequences.
''Essentially, we can answer the question of: do we need to worry about this as it could cause quite a lot of people to become sick, or is this not going to trouble the community too much?''
To understand the genetic changes that determined whether an emerging strain of Salmonella would cause food poisoning versus a more severe infection, researchers built the tool to analyse which mutations would play an important role.
Project co-leader Dr Nicole Wheeler, of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said the tool allowed scientists to ''tackle massive data sets'' and get results in seconds.
''Ultimately, this work will have a big impact on the surveillance of dangerous bacteria in a way we haven't been able to before, not only in hospital wards, but at a global scale.''
Developers believed the tool could also be used to study other factors, such as emerging antibiotic resistance in any bacteria, and could be used in real time to identify a dangerous strain of bacteria before it spread and caused an outbreak.
