Work to crack E.coli bug
It’s emerged that scientists in Norwich have been helping to research the recent E.coli scare which saw 50 people die in Germany.
They describe it as one of the nastiest bugs they’ve come across.Since the E.coli outbreak in May, over 4000 people have been affected. E. coli is a bacterium that usually inhabits the guts of cattle and sheep and is mostly harmless but to tackle such a potent new strain, details of the make-up of the bug were posted online by Chinese scientists, opening the data up to ‘crowd-sourcing’. In the UK, scientists at The Genome Analysis Centre on Norwich Research Park joined in with the research, exploring how the bug came to survive.
Dr Lisa Crossman was one of the scientists who got involved: “It’s definitely one of the nastiest bugs I’ve looked at.” What she discovered was that bacteria had a capacity to stick very tightly to things, and even group together with other bacteria, making it more resistant to anti-biotics. Scientists from Spain, Australia and Britain have all been working on the research, trying to piece together how best to tackle this strain of E.coli: “By compiling all the different sequences, you get an idea of what’s important and what’s not.”
Norwich Research Park
According to Dr Crossman, the outbreak has now been traced to a contaminated crop of bean sprouts in Egypt, which somehow stayed on the seeds. She adds it’s been tricky publicising any findings because of the knock-on effect any research could have on vegetable growers.
Certain batches of fenugreek seeds, beans and sprouts imported sourced from Egypt, linked to recent outbreaks of E.coli O104 have been withdrawn from sale in Europe. The advice from the Food Standards Agency is: “Sprouted seeds should only be eaten if they have been cooked thoroughly until steaming hot throughout; they should not be eaten raw.”
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