Question

E. coli often comes to mind when reading about proteins and discussing them and it often makes headlines in the news. My challenge for this chapter's discussion topic is this: find a recent (within the last month) news article that involves E. coli and share it with the class. Why does it seem that this bacteria is always in the news? Remember, this chapter is the protein chapter, so why is E. coli so important to proteins and vice versa?

Please no pictures or handwritten answers - only typed responses

Answer 1

Selection of an article can be done by the student as there are plenty of papers on E.coli which has been recently published (Use Pubmed to find relevant articles) because each student has a different way of looking at things and different areas of interest in E.coli biology. Eg: Few may be interested in structures, few in functional aspects, few in characterisation of particular enzymes, few in infection biology. Thus my advice to all young students is to choose the subjects related to E.coli carefully based on your area of interest.

E.coli is commonly found and very well studied, as there are many serotypes that are not harmful to human beings. Another aspect to note is its simplicity in terms of structure and function. Also it is very easy to grow (doubling time of 20 min), genes are well characterised (thus enabling gene-protein-structure-function relationship study), knockouts and mutants have been generated, propagation of genes/clones easy if vector has a selection marker. Also several literature is already available, making it easy for people to work on E.coli (tools/techniques mostly well standardised). Thus prevalence and ease of scientific use makes it always in news.

E.coli protein synthesis was first illustrated due to the ease with which one can obtain DNA, RNA, ribosomes and several protein synthesis factors like IF,Elongation and termination factors. Also structure for many protein synthesis related proteins have been well studied and characterised. Thus understanding the biology of protein synthesis becomes easier. One can also look at evolutionarily conserved sequences and project it to other classes of organisms. Again simplicity in terms of its overall design and ease of use makes it amenable to study not only protein synthesis but also other parameters related to structure and function of proteins in E.coli.