Publications by authors named "M Aslett"
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- Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) relies on colonization factors (CFs) to infect the small intestine and cause diarrhea, with 30% of clinical isolates lacking known CFs.
- Researchers used a reverse genetics approach on 94 whole genome sequenced "CF negative" isolates, discovering a new CF called CS30, which is encoded by seven thermo-regulated genes (csmA-G) and expressed at body temperature (37 °C).
- Further analysis showed that CS30 allows ETEC to bind to human intestinal cells and is found in a notable percentage of "CF negative" isolates, suggesting its role in diarrhea-causing ETEC infections.
Together with plague, smallpox and typhus, epidemics of dysentery have been a major scourge of human populations for centuries(1). A previous genomic study concluded that Shigella dysenteriae type 1 (Sd1), the epidemic dysentery bacillus, emerged and spread worldwide after the First World War, with no clear pattern of transmission(2). This is not consistent with the massive cyclic dysentery epidemics reported in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries(1,3,4) and the first isolation of Sd1 in Japan in 1897(5).
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