Explosive E. Coli Bacteria Can Be Harmless, Even Beneficial
December 17, 2018 at 1:59 p.m.
By Max [email protected]
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), E. coli has also been associated with food poisoning from consuming bologna, cheese, hazelnuts, romaine lettuce, poultry, beef, pizza and cookie dough. E. coli is also the most common etiologic gram negative organism responsible for U. S. hospital-acquired urinary tract infections.
The fact that E. coli bacteria can come in many toxic strains or serotypes which reproduce at astronomical rates is the basis for their potential danger. The organism can double its population in less than two hours under the right conditions, which means that it has the potential to make people, especially children and the elderly, very sick.
The explosive population rate is also one of the reasons E. coli can be used for genetic research. All E. coli strains share the same underlying biology, but they range from being harmless and beneficial to being extremely dangerous pathogens. The well-known strain K-12, for example, is harmless. Other strains are a different story and books have been written that describe their mechanisms of virulence.
E. coli was first described in 1885 by Theodor Escherich, a German pediatrician, in a monograph on the relationship of intestinal bacteria to the physiology of digestion in the infant. (The organism was isolated from the diapers of healthy babies.) He called it “bacterium coli commune.” At that time, E. coli was merely one of a rapidly growing list of species of bacteria that scientists were discovering. In 1919, the name Escherichia coli was proposed in his honor, but it was not officially recognized until 1958.
The Organism
Escherichia coli is a typical member of the Enterobacteriaceae family that have their principle habitat in the bowel of humans and animals. It is a short, straight gram-negative bacteria. In nature it is found in soil, water or at any other site it can reach from its primary habitat, usually by fecal contamination.
E. coli is a fairly typical bacterium about 1 micron wide and 2 microns long. Thus a billion of them can be packed into a volume of a few cubic centimeters. They can be frozen alive and in the frozen state they can persist almost indefinitely without any serious loss. At a very low temperature, such as in space, many of them would likely survive for well over ten thousand years. The characteristics of this organism make E. coli an ideal laboratory research tool.
As mentioned above, E. coli is widely disseminated throughout the food chain. In the 1990s and into the early 21st century, the majority of food borne E. coli outbreaks were caused by the consumption of contaminated ground beef. Numerous outbreaks and massive recalls of contaminated meat products continue to plague the meat industry and the public. Water intended for recreation and for human consumption can also become contaminated. Other means of transmission include person-to-person and animal-to-person contact.
In the early 20th century, scientists began to study harmless strains of E. coli to understand the nature of life. Now more is known about E. coli than about any other organism in the biosphere, including humans, and the genome for E. coli is one of the most extensively mapped of any organism. Generations of researchers have probed into the existence of the organism, carefully studying most of its 4000 –odd genes and discovering more and more about evolution. Through this work, scientists can see an ancient history we share, a history that includes the complex features in cells, the common ancestor of all living things, a world before DNA. With the knowledge gained from E. coli, genetic engineers now transform corn, pigs and even fish. E. coli has also been used to define the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying how microbes cause disease.
Carl Zimmer, an award-winning science writer, perhaps best describes the friend and foe aspects for E. coli in the following paragraph:
“E. coli may seem like an odd choice as a guide to life if the only place you’ve heard about it is in the news reports of food poisoning. There are certainly some deadly strains in its ranks. But most E. coli are harmless. Billions of them live peacefully in my intestines, billions more in yours, and many others in just about every warm blooded animal on Earth. All told, there are around 100 billion billion on Earth. They live in rivers and lakes, forests and backyards. And they also live in thousands of laboratories, nurtured in yeasty flasks and smeared across petri dishes.”
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. He has taught college courses on regulatory and compliance issues at Ivy Tech, Grace College and Butler University. Sherman has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge on all levels. Eclectic Science, the title of his column, will touch on famed doctors and scientists, human senses, aging, various diseases, and little-known facts about many species, including their contributions to scientific research. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), E. coli has also been associated with food poisoning from consuming bologna, cheese, hazelnuts, romaine lettuce, poultry, beef, pizza and cookie dough. E. coli is also the most common etiologic gram negative organism responsible for U. S. hospital-acquired urinary tract infections.
The fact that E. coli bacteria can come in many toxic strains or serotypes which reproduce at astronomical rates is the basis for their potential danger. The organism can double its population in less than two hours under the right conditions, which means that it has the potential to make people, especially children and the elderly, very sick.
The explosive population rate is also one of the reasons E. coli can be used for genetic research. All E. coli strains share the same underlying biology, but they range from being harmless and beneficial to being extremely dangerous pathogens. The well-known strain K-12, for example, is harmless. Other strains are a different story and books have been written that describe their mechanisms of virulence.
E. coli was first described in 1885 by Theodor Escherich, a German pediatrician, in a monograph on the relationship of intestinal bacteria to the physiology of digestion in the infant. (The organism was isolated from the diapers of healthy babies.) He called it “bacterium coli commune.” At that time, E. coli was merely one of a rapidly growing list of species of bacteria that scientists were discovering. In 1919, the name Escherichia coli was proposed in his honor, but it was not officially recognized until 1958.
The Organism
Escherichia coli is a typical member of the Enterobacteriaceae family that have their principle habitat in the bowel of humans and animals. It is a short, straight gram-negative bacteria. In nature it is found in soil, water or at any other site it can reach from its primary habitat, usually by fecal contamination.
E. coli is a fairly typical bacterium about 1 micron wide and 2 microns long. Thus a billion of them can be packed into a volume of a few cubic centimeters. They can be frozen alive and in the frozen state they can persist almost indefinitely without any serious loss. At a very low temperature, such as in space, many of them would likely survive for well over ten thousand years. The characteristics of this organism make E. coli an ideal laboratory research tool.
As mentioned above, E. coli is widely disseminated throughout the food chain. In the 1990s and into the early 21st century, the majority of food borne E. coli outbreaks were caused by the consumption of contaminated ground beef. Numerous outbreaks and massive recalls of contaminated meat products continue to plague the meat industry and the public. Water intended for recreation and for human consumption can also become contaminated. Other means of transmission include person-to-person and animal-to-person contact.
In the early 20th century, scientists began to study harmless strains of E. coli to understand the nature of life. Now more is known about E. coli than about any other organism in the biosphere, including humans, and the genome for E. coli is one of the most extensively mapped of any organism. Generations of researchers have probed into the existence of the organism, carefully studying most of its 4000 –odd genes and discovering more and more about evolution. Through this work, scientists can see an ancient history we share, a history that includes the complex features in cells, the common ancestor of all living things, a world before DNA. With the knowledge gained from E. coli, genetic engineers now transform corn, pigs and even fish. E. coli has also been used to define the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying how microbes cause disease.
Carl Zimmer, an award-winning science writer, perhaps best describes the friend and foe aspects for E. coli in the following paragraph:
“E. coli may seem like an odd choice as a guide to life if the only place you’ve heard about it is in the news reports of food poisoning. There are certainly some deadly strains in its ranks. But most E. coli are harmless. Billions of them live peacefully in my intestines, billions more in yours, and many others in just about every warm blooded animal on Earth. All told, there are around 100 billion billion on Earth. They live in rivers and lakes, forests and backyards. And they also live in thousands of laboratories, nurtured in yeasty flasks and smeared across petri dishes.”
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. He has taught college courses on regulatory and compliance issues at Ivy Tech, Grace College and Butler University. Sherman has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge on all levels. Eclectic Science, the title of his column, will touch on famed doctors and scientists, human senses, aging, various diseases, and little-known facts about many species, including their contributions to scientific research. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
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