Escherichia coli

Escherichia coli ^] commonly abbreviated E. coli) is a Gram-negative,

•  rod-shaped bacterium that is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms (endotherms).
• Most E. coli strains are harmless, but some serotypes can cause serious food poisoning in humans, and are occasionally responsible for product recalls due to food contamination.^[
•  The harmless strains are part of the normal flora of the gut, and can benefit their hosts by producing vitamin K₂,
•  and by preventing the establishment of pathogenic bacteria within the intestine.

E. coli and related bacteria constitute about 0.1% of gut flora
^] and fecal-oral transmission is the major route through which pathogenic strains of the bacterium cause disease.

• Cells are able to survive outside the body for a limited amount of time, which makes them ideal indicator organisms to test environmental samples for fecal contamination.
• . E. coli is the most widely studied prokaryotic model organism, and an important species in the fields of biotechnology and microbiology, where it has served as the host organism for the majority of work with recombinant DNA.

recently in news

One such E. coli strain, Escherichia coli O104:H4, has been the subject of a bacterial outbreak that began in Germany in May 2011.

•  Certain strains of E. coli are a major cause of foodborne illness. The outbreak started when several people in Germany were infected with enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) bacteria, leading to hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS), a medical emergency that requires urgent treatment.
•  On 30 June 2011 the German Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung (BfR) (Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, a federal, fully legal entity under public law of the Federal Republic of Germany, an institute within the German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection)
• announced that seeds of fenugreek from Egypt were likely the cause of the EHEC outbreak