Category Archives: E. coli

ZOMG!! TEH E KOLI R IN UR CHICKENZ!! BARGLE BARGLE!!

Posted on April 18, 2012 by

The NY Times recently had a story about a study by a pro-vegan medical group which claimed that 48 percent of chickens bought at supermarkets are contaminated with E. coli. Of course, the vegan group referred to the E. coli … Continue reading →

Posted in E. coli, Food, Propaganda, Public Health | 9 Comments

Are Deer the Reservoir for Shiga-Toxinogenic E. coli (STEC)?

Posted on April 9, 2012 by

THIS IS THE FACE OF THE ENEMY! (from here) A recent paper in Applied and Environment Microbiology describes the frequency of STEC–Shiga toxin producing E. coli–in wild animals. STEC can cause organ failure and death and are found throughout E. … Continue reading →

Posted in E. coli, Food, Microbiology, Public Health

According to Anti-Gay Bigot ‘Logic’, Minnesota Teens Are Having Sex With Deer. Or Something (You’ll Never Think About Bambi the Same Way Again)

Posted on February 8, 2012 by

Lots of people believe HIV entered the human population because people had sex with monkeys, when it is probably due to contact with monkey blood (and other fluids) after killing the monkey for food. As ERV noted, if you tried … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservatives, E. coli, Fucking Morons, Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

The Colicin Plasmid Persistence Problem

Posted on January 12, 2012 by

Yesterday, I described an interesting paper that provides a potential solution to the plasmid persistence problem–how do bacterial mini-chromosomes that can jump from bacterium to bacterium survive? Not only does this paper shed some light on the ‘plasmid persistence problem’, … Continue reading →

Posted in E. coli, Plasmids, Salmonella

Salmonella, E. coli, and Plasmids, Oh My! Solving the Plasmid Persistence Problem and the Virtues of Open Non-Equilibrium Models

Posted on January 11, 2012 by

Ed Yong has some very good coverage of a recent PNAS paper that describes how bacterial mini-chromosomes, known as plasmids and that often carry disease-related or antibiotic resistance genes, can jump from bacterium to bacterium at really high rates when … Continue reading →

Posted in E. coli, Evolution, Plasmids, Salmonella | 3 Comments

Misunderstanding Poop and Sewage

Posted on September 8, 2011 by

Well, sewage to be more precise. One of the harmful, but often unmentioned consequences of flooding is that our sewage systems, often decades old, are completely overwhelmed. This exposes people to sewage: Flooding appears to be the worst problem left … Continue reading →

Posted in E. coli, Microbiology, Viruses | 4 Comments

A Role for Morons? Thoughts on the Extinct Plague

Posted on September 6, 2011 by

This isn’t my usual post about morons (or fucking morons). Nope, this is about the Black Death, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis (we’ll get to the morons in a bit). Recent work, published in The Proceedings of the National … Continue reading →

Posted in E. coli, Evolution, Fucking Morons, Microbiology, You're Having a Bad Hair Life

STEC Surveillance: UR DOING IT WRONG?

Posted on August 22, 2011 by

I CAN HAZ SHIGA TOCKSIN PCR? PLZ? It’s time for food, and specifically STEC, surveillance, to enter the last two decades of the twentieth century.
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Posted in E. coli, Food, Genetics, Microbiology | 5 Comments

Public Data, Publishing, Priority, and Public Health

Posted on July 27, 2011 by

While publication is enshrined as the pinnacle of scientific communication, in the case of the E. coli O104:H4 outbreak, it was pretty much irrelevant. It also encouraged bad behavior.
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Posted in E. coli, Genomics, Propaganda, Publishing | 4 Comments

There’s No Such Thing As Perfect Genome Sequence

Posted on July 11, 2011 by

No genome sequence, even a finished one, is perfect. But we can still do good science, even as we recognize the flaws in the data.
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Posted in E. coli, Genomics