E. coli O127:H6 strain E2348/69 

1.) Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) - first E. coli to be implicated in human disease, and still a major cause of diarrhea in children in developing countries.

2.) No EPEC strain has been fully sequenced yet.

3.) The E. coli strain sequenced - E2348/69 - is the most studied pathogenic strain of E. coli  - this was isolated from a patient in the UK in 1969, and has been extensively used in many pathogenic studies since then.  

So as such its genome is important - how does this genome differ from the other dozen or so E. coli genomes that’ve been sequenced?  ~23% of the chromosome contains strain-specific regions, and there are 424 strain-specific genes.


4.) The paper compares this strain [E2348/69] to eight other E. coli genomes...

5.) Current statistics - there are 15 different E. coli genomes in GenBank - with another 7 Shigellas - so that’s 22 that are public - most of these have been published.  

6.)  Add to this another 36 E. coli genomes “in progress”, as well as an E. albertii and another 3 Shigellas, this brings to a total 62 Escherichia / Shigella genomes sequences - so far!

7.) In addition to the 424 “new” genes that are strain specific, there are also several examples of gene loss - for example there are 168 pseudogenes in E2348/69 genome.

8.) EPEC is characterized by the formation of distinct attaching and effacing lesions - which are caused by the locus of enterocyte effacement (LEE). This has been known about for years

9.) Now, with the full genome sequence, other virulence proteins, fall into several classes:
	-Afimbrial adhesins and outer membrane proteins
	-Fimbrial adhesions
	-Type II secretion systems (T2SS), iron uptake systems and virulence gene regulators
	-T3SSs and their effectors

10.) Conclusion - “the simplicity of the virulence gene set of E2348/69 will provide the 
first opportunity to fully dissect the entire virulence strategy of A/E pathogens in the genomic 
context.