History
The genera Escherichia and Salmonella diverged around 102 million years ago (credibility interval: 57–176 mya), which coincides with the divergence of their hosts: the former being found in mammals and the latter in birds and reptiles. This was followed by a split of the escherichian ancestor into five species (E. albertii, E. coli, E. fergusonii, E. hermannii and E. vulneris.) The last E. coli ancestor split between 20 and 30 million years ago.
In 1885, Theodor Escherich, a German pediatrician, first discovered this species in the feces of healthy individuals and called it Bacterium coli commune due to the fact it is found in the colon and early classifications of Prokaryotes placed these in a handful of genera based on their shape and motility (at that time Ernst Haeckel's classification of Bacteria in the kingdom Monera was in place). Bacterium coli was the type species of the now invalid genus Bacterium when it was revealed that the former type species ("Bacterium triloculare") was missing. Following a revision of Bacteria it was reclassified as Bacillus coli by Migula in 1895 and later reclassified in the newly created genus Escherichia, named after its original discoverer.
The genus belongs in a group of bacteria informally known as "coliforms", and is a member of the Enterobacteriaceae family ("the enterics") of the Gammaproteobacteria.
In May 2011, one E. coli strain, Escherichia coli O104:H4, has been the subject of a bacterial outbreak that began in Germany. Certain strains of E. coli are a major cause of foodborne illness. The outbreak started when several people in Germany were infected with enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) bacteria, leading to hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS), a medical emergency that requires urgent treatment. The outbreak did not only concern Germany, but 11 other countries, including regions in North America. On 30 June 2011 the German Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung (BfR) (Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, a federal, fully legal entity under public law of the Federal Republic of Germany, an institute within the German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection) announced that seeds of fenugreek from Egypt were likely the cause of the EHEC outbreak.
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