David M. Gordon

TL;DR: A new PCR-based method is developed that enables an E. coli isolate to be assigned to one of the eight phylo-groups and which allows isolates that are members of the other cryptic clades (II to V) of Escherichia to be identified.

TL;DR: It is shown that, for certain types of host-parasite associations, convex curves of mean parasite abundance in relation to age (age-intensity curves), concomitant with a decline in the degree of dispersion in the older age, classes of hosts, may be evidence of the induction in host mortality by parasite infection.

TL;DR: The results of this study suggest that, at the species level, the ecological niche of E. coli is mammals with hindgut modifications to enable microbial fermentation, or in the absence of a modified hindGut, E. bacteria can only establish a population in 'large-bodied' hosts.

TL;DR: The bacteriocins of Escherichia coli have served as a model for exploring the ecological role of these potent toxins and suggest that colicins provide a competitive edge in nutrient-poor environments and that there might be a trade-off between the costs and benefits of colicin production.

TL;DR: The genome sequences of nine environmentally adapted strains are reported that are phenotypically and taxonomically indistinguishable from typical E. coli (commensal or pathogenic), but the commensal genomes encode for more functions that are important for fitness in the human gut, and hence do not evolve according to the recently proposed fragmented speciation model.