Researchers crack code of German E. Coli outbreak
A team led by University of Maryland School of Medicine Institute for Genome Sciences researchers has unraveled the genomic code of the E. coli bacterium that caused the ongoing deadly outbreak in Germany that began in May 2011. To date, 53 people have died in the outbreak that has sickened thousand in Germany, Sweden and the U.S. The paper, published July 27 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), describes how researchers around the globe worked together to use cutting edge technology to sequence and analyze the genomics of E. coli samples from the outbreak as well as closely related strains in a matter of days. They combined those findings with their knowledge of the biology and evolution of the bacteria to learn more about the outbreak. The analysis occurred rapidly enough to inform the physicians treating people who were infected, and assisted epidemiologists as they raced to trace...