 
E. coli waves the Blue Flag for our beaches - Microbiology
Today: August 2004 issue
27 July 2004
E. coli, the bug made famous by food poisoning outbreaks,
can be used to point the finger of blame at the right culprit
when our waterways become polluted. E. coli live in the
guts of animals and are already used to indicate whether food
and water are contaminated with faecal material. However, according
to a recent article in the August 2004 issue of Microbiology
Today, the quarterly magazine of the Society for General Microbiology,
this work can be extended to use the bugs to detect and find the
source of the pollution.
Researchers at the University of Lancaster isolated E. coli
bacteria from all the likely sources of pollution (cattle, sheep,
donkeys, wild birds, dogs and humans) and then 'fingerprinted'
the DNA from each isolate to form a unique bar code. The bar codes
were all stored in a searchable computer library, which is used
to match new samples from contaminated sites.
"This should help to identify sources, prevent contamination
and improve health", explains Dr Keith Jones from the University
of Lancaster. "If you isolate E. coli from a contaminated
environment it is possible to match the DNA fingerprint with that
from different animals in the library. This then tells you which
animal sources are responsible for that pollution."
A recent finding showed that pollution of a beach in Northwest
England was not due to contamination from human sewage, as thought,
but from seabird droppings.
In the laboratory E. coli has long been associated with
advancing research in cell and molecular biology and this issue
of Microbiology Today explores some of the many aspects
of E. coli, from the friend to the foe. Thanks to genomics,
scientists now understand why some strains of E. coli are
harmless, whilst others are deadly. For example, E. coli
O157:H7 was made infamous due to a fatal outbreak in Scotland
in 1996, whilst other strains, such as E. coli K-12, the
most well studied bacterium in science, have contributed enormously
to our understanding of how cells work.
Other features in the August 2004 issue of Microbiology Today
include:
· Escherichia coli: model and menace (page
114)
· The history of E. coli K-12 (page 116)
· Diarrhoeal disease in the UK (page 117)
· E. coli as a probiotic (page 119)
· Comparative genomics (page 124)
· Getting to the bottom of the burger bug (page
126)
These are just some of the articles that appear, together with
all the regular features and reports of Society activities.
- ENDS -
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