ABSTRACT
Laboratorium voor Scheikunde der Proteïnen, Instituut voor Moleculaire Biologie en Biotechnologie, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Paardenstraat 65, B-1640 Sint-
Genesius-Rode, Belgium
INTRODUCTION
Escherichia coli is a well-known normal inhabitant of the large intestine of mammals and birds. This bacterium, originally isolated in 1885 from faeces by the German paediatrician Theodore Escherich, is however also the causative agent of a diversity of diseases in man and his livestock, such as diarrhoea, urinary tract infections, cystitis, pyelonephritis, meningitis, peritonitis, septicaemia or gram-negative pneumonia. From all these diseases, diarrhoea was one of the first to be investigated, and the relation between outbreaks of diarrhoea and E.coli infections was already established since the end of the last century (for a historical review, see Robins-Browne, 1987).
