Sadjia Bekal

Biography

Dr. Sadjia Bekal is a microbiologist and molecular biologist at the provincial public health of Quebec. She is the leader of enteric pathogen program and an expert in emergency response to bacterial threats including bioterrorism agents and emerging pathogens.  Her specific focus in enteric microbiology includes developing molecular and genomic tools for the surveillance and investigation of foodborne disease, and their application to outbreak detection and response. She is a member of several provincial and national committees and working groups such PulseNet-Canada, Cipars, NESP and CLRN. Dr. Bekal is also responsible of providing clinicians with validated methods, training programs and courses to improve detection and surveillance of enteric pathogens.

Team 

• Valentine Usongo, postdoc fellow
• Khadidja yousfi, PhD student
• Rufaida Hassan Khan, MSc student
• Florence Doualla-bell, Research coordinator

Theme

• Bacteriology

Research topics

• Evaluation of genomic as a tool for Salmonella molecular typing
• Use of comparative genomic for virulence factor identification in Shiga toxin producing coli
• Molecular characterization of Shigella with reduced susceptibility to azithromycin
• Molecular characterization of multi-drug resistant Gram negative bacteria

Publications

• Usongo V, Berry C, Yousfi K, Doualla-BellF, Labbé G, Johnson R, Fournier E, Nadon C, Goodridge L, Bekal S. Impact of the choice of reference genome on the ability of the core genome SNV methodology to distinguish strains of Salmonella enterica serovar  PLoS One. 2018 Feb 5;13(2):e0192233.
• Caroline Vincent, Valentine Usongo, Chrystal Berry, Khadidja Yousfi, Florence Doualla-Bell, Eric Fournier, Chrystal Berry, Denis M. Tremblay, Sylvain Moineau, Lawrence Goodridge, Céline Nadon, Sadjia Bekal. Comparison of advanced Whole genome sequence-based methods to distinguish strains of Salmonella enterica serovar Heidelberg involved in foodborne outbreaks in Quebec. Food Microbiology. 2018 August 73:99-110.
• Mangat CS, Bekal S, Irwin RJ, Mulvey MR. A Novel Hybrid Plasmid Carrying Multiple Antimicrobial Resistance and Virulence Genes in Salmonella enterica Serovar Dublin. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2017 May 24;61(6). pii: e02601-16.
• Gaudreau C, Pilon PA, Cornut G, Marchand-Senecal X, Bekal S. Shigella flexneri with Ciprofloxacin Resistance and Reduced Azithromycin Susceptibility, Canada, 2015. Emerg Infect Dis. 2016 Nov;22(11):2016-18.
• Yousfi K, Touati A, Bekal S. Complete Genome Sequence of an Extensively Drug-Resistant Shewanella xiamenensis Strain Isolated from Algerian Hospital Effluents. Genome Announc. 2016 Nov 10;4(6). PMID : 27834700
• Gaudreau C, Pilon PA, Sylvestre JL, Boucher F, Bekal S. Multidrug-resistant Campylobacter coli in men who have sex with men, Quebec, Canada, 2015. Emerg Infect Dis. 2016 Sep;22(9):1661-3.