Investigating the Foodborne Parasite Cyclospora in Environmental Waters is looking to enroll students for course credit in the Spring 2026 semester. Paid opportunities may be available on a case by case basis.
This project’s goal is to better understand the prevalence, transmission, and epidemiological traceback investigation of Cyclospora cayetanensis, a human foodborne and waterborne protozoan parasite that causes cyclosporiasis.
Cyclospora cayetanensis is a coccidian protozoan parasite causing cyclosporiasis, a diarrheal disease worldwide, associated with the consumption of fresh produce or water contaminated with the sporulated oocysts from the parasite.
The project workflow includes sample collection, concentration, DNA extraction, purification, and molecular analysis by qPCR. Positive samples for C. cayetanensis are further analyzed with amplicon target sequencing on the Next Generation Sequencing platform Oxford Nanopore MinION. Sequences are analyzed on NCBI Gen Bank directly, using the University of Arizona High Performance Computing (HPC). This NGS is critical in providing secondary confirmation of Cyclospora-positive samples and for epidemiological traceback investigations to help solve and prevent fresh produce outbreaks.
Please have a cover letter and resume ready to upload when applying to this team.
For more information about this team, please visit the Investigating the Foodborne Parasite Cyclospora in Environmental Waters website.
