Escherichia coli

Escherichia coli is a gram negative facultative anaerobic rods commonly found in the intestinal tracts of animals. This type of bacteria is capable of growing and metabolizing glucose both in aerobic conditions and in anaerobic conditions because it is capable of surviving in external aerobic environments as well as internal anaerobic environment such as the gastrointestinal tract of warm blooded animals. E. coli thrives in the intestines in the intestines of animals both in health and disease. It aids in the process of digestion, helps in the absorption of many important nutrients required by the body and protects the gastrointestinal tract from various harmful bacteria. Most strains of E. coli are harmless, while other strains may produce toxins that can cause various types of diseases in humans, such as for example E. coli 0157 which can be a seriuos cause of gastroenteritis .

In many microbiology studies, E. coli is often used as a model organinsm in lab experiments serving as an experimental tool in order to understand how other organisms function and react to certain situations. It is a commonly used model organism due to its fast reproduction time, how easily it is manipulated and its already sequenced genome. The E. coli strain K-12 is the strain most commonly used in the laboratory. It has 4.6 million nucleotide pairs in its genome that code for approxamately 4300 different proteins .

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