Topics Of Interest
- Foodborne bacterial community composition and its transitional stages in the cycle of production, packaging, storage, distribution and consumption of different foods
- Mapping the biogeography of foodborne bacterial communities in crop and animal farms
- Human gut microbiome and its changes in response to the dietary regimes of interest
- Toxin production and regulation in model bacteria including Clostridium botulinum
- Rapid and reliable identification of foodborne microorganisms including bacteria, viruses, and eukaryotic microbes of interest
- Bacterial resistance against antibiotics, sanitizers, disinfectants, heat, cold and pressure
- Evolution of pathogenicity in foodborne bacteria
Past, Completed, Ongoing Research Projects
- Investigating the possible mutagenic effects of manipulating the treatment time, frequency, energy and voltage on a Pulsed Light instrument in the genome of Listeria monocytogenes
- Evaluating the use of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) in linking contaminated seed to sprout in recent Salmonella outbreaks
- Characterization of more than 100 Group I and Group II Clostridium botulinum strains with a focus on toxin gene clusters
- Identifying the genes involved in the regulation of botulinum neurotoxin production, using transcriptomics (RNA-seq) of Clostridium botulinum, investigating the role of growth media, pH and temperature
- Investigating microbial community composition and characterization of transitional stages of this community in conjunction with the biofilm formation in an industrial setting
- Investigating the effects of select sanitizers on the structure and composition of microbial community in various industrial and laboratory settings
- Characterization and comparison of soil microbial communities in Detroit city community gardens
- Developing a bioinformatic tool to accurately and quickly distinguish the plasmid from chromosomal sequences
- Developing a pipeline to analyze marker gene amplicon sequencing data automatically and consistently
- Determining the Hotspots for amino acid variability and toxin type diversity
- Investigating the fate of large plasmids containing botulinum neuro toxin genes in several Clostridia species
- Developing a pipeline to simplify and improve phylogenomic analyses
Publications
- Imanian, Behzad, et al. 2022. The power, potential, benefits, and challenges of implementing high-throughput sequencing in food safety systems." npj Science of Food 6.1 (2022): 35.
- Tian, Renmao; Imanian Behzad. 2022. PlasmidHunter: Accurate and Fast Plasmid Prediction Based on Gene Content Using Machine Learning (under review).
- Tian, R. Imanian, B. 2022. ASAP 2: A Pipeline and Web Server to Analyze Marker Gene Amplicon Sequencing Data Automatically and Consistently. BMC Bioinformatics (23) 27.
- Tian, Renmao, Melissa Widel, and Behzad Imanian. 2022. The Light Chain Domain and Especially the C-Terminus of Receptor-Binding Domain of the Botulinum Neurotoxin (BoNT) Are the Hotspots for Amino Acid Variability and Toxin Type Diversity. Genes 13.10: 1915.
- Smith, T. J., Tian, R.* (co-first author), Imanian, B., Williamson, C. H., Johnson, S. L., Daligault, H. E., & Schill, K. M. 2021. Integration of Complete Plasmids Containing Bont Genes into Chromosomes of Clostridium parabotulinum, Clostridium sporogenes, and Clostridium argentinense. Toxins, 13(7), 473.
Tools
Amplicon Sequence Analysis Pipeline (ASAP)
PlasmidHunter, PlasmidHunter
VBCG, Coming soon