Laboratory K-12 colonizing our guts?

[Tom Anderson]

On Thu, 3 May 2007, Trond Erik Vee Aune wrote:

> DK wrote:
>
> > In article <f1c8ep$dbo$1 from orkan.itea.ntnu.no>, Trond Erik Vee Aune <trondaun from nt.ntnu.no> wrote:
> >
> >>* Can our modern laboratory K-12 acutally establish themselves in our
> >>guts, competing with our natural flora?
> >
> > I think the common explanation is that laboratory strains are too meek
> > and fibble to survive competition with their wild brothers. Whatever
> > the reason, it does not seem to happen - people express all kind of
> > bacterial toxins in E.coli (I personally did two) and no one ever died
> > from lab E.coli yet.
>
> My thoughts went in similar directions, but do you know of any studies
> supporting our hypothesis that lab bugs are too weak to compete with
> natural gut flora?

Well, as so often in our trade, there is only one way to find out ...

> It would be a simple test to PCR screen for plasmid DNA from fecal
> matter.

You may find this useful:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=11997164

Let us know how you get on!

tom

-- 
Tom Anderson, MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, UCL, London WC1E 6BT
(t) +44 (20) 76797264   (f) +44 (20) 76797805   (e) thomas.anderson from ucl.ac.uk