Es­cherichia coli – Flag­ship Bac­terium of Mol­e­c­u­lar Bi­ol­ogy

by Roberto

Cross sec­tion through an en­tire Esche­richia coli cell. The cell wall is in green, the cy­to­plasm is in ma­genta and blue, and the nu­cleoid is in yel­low and or­ange. The boxed re­gion is en­larged here. Art­work by David S. Good­sell. Source

There is lit­tle doubt that Es­cherichia coli  is a fa­vorite of ours here at STC. E. coli fans from around the world seem to get a spe­cial thrill when we post any new de­vel­op­ment aris­ing from stud­ies on this as­ton­ish­ing model bac­terium. We are so taken by it that our cov­er­age has gone be­yond describ­ing re­search. Pre­vi­ously on STC... In 2016, Mehmet Berk­men and Paul Riggs re­lated their re­search into the his­tory of how E. coli strain K‑12 got its name. And a lit­tle less than a year ago, I de­scribed some of the events that helped E. coli rise to promi­nence.* Now, E. coli afi­ciona­dos around the world re­joice! As part of what is go­ing to be an out­stand­ing col­lection of JB ar­ti­cles on model mi­crobes, Na­tivi­dad Ruiz and Thomas Sil­havy con­tributed an au­thor­i­ta­tive trea­tise en­ti­tled "How Es­cherichia coli Be­came the Flag­ship Bac­terium of Mole­cular Bi­ol­ogy" (not Ope­nAc­cess yet). For those of you deeply steeped in the his­tor­i­cal events that sur­round the rise of E. coli, this read­ing likely will bring some tears to your eyes. And for you E. coli new­bies among our read­ers, this is a won­der­ful text to ac­quaint your­selves with the amaz­ing his­tory of our beloved bac­terium.

*Thanks to Guy Plun­ket III for point­ing out this ad­di­tional STC post on the his­tory of E. coli: Brooke Anderson's Stand­ing on the Shoul­ders of a Tiny Gi­ant.