Transfer of attaching and effacing capacity from a strain of enteropathogenic Escherichia coli to E. coli K-12

Abstract

The ability to cause attaching and effacing (AE) lesions in intestinal epithelial cells is an essential virulence trait of entero-pathogenic E. coli (EPEC) that requires several chromosomal genes acting in concert with one another. In this study, we show that the ability to cause AE lesions can be transferred by conjugal mating from a high frequency recombinant (Hfr) derivative of a rabbit EPEC strain, E. coli RDEC-1, to a strain of E. coli K- 12. Although the recipient acquired a considerable amount of donor DNA during the transfer process, it expressed the AE phenotype only weakly. The findings suggest that AE is a multi-gene phenomenon, the genes for which may not reside on a single regio..