Mary Anne Amalaradjou

Associate Professor, CAHNR

Animal Science

Current Research Interests:
My research primarily focuses on food safety and gut health. Specifically, it is targeted towards understanding pathogen survival and persistence along the food chain, their virulence attributes and the application of biopreservation strategies to control foodborne pathogens. I also study the efficacy of currently applied hurdle technologies to reduce pathogen transmission during pre- and post-harvest processing of fresh produce, meat and dairy products. Research conducted in my laboratory revealed that protective cultures including probiotics and lactic cultures are capable of controlling pathogens on fresh produce. Beyond food systems my research also investigates the potential application of probiotics and protective cultures in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. These studies have demonstrated that protective cultures promote gut health by attenuating pathogen virulence, reducing colonization, modulating host gut barrier integrity and host immune response.