h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: E. coli: Friend or Foe? - A1048385
Author: Ste - U172039

A collaborative effort between Farlander and myself, which aims to inform people of how E. coli can not only hurt us, but help us too.

I hope you enjoy it.

Farlander & Ste

woo hoo!

been waiting for this moment. too bad the pcr collab never got off the ground, eh, ste? i'll get around to that someday...

(I've got a reputation to maintain, so here I am. )

This is a brilliant entry - well done!

Here come my , nevertheless...

- I'd suggest changing the title to just 'E. coli'. The 'Friend or Foe?' part doesn't add anything to it, in my opinion.

- I think 'Enterobacteriacae' should be italicised.

- You could link to A471575 whenever bacteriophages are mentioned.

- Under 'E. coli: A Part of the Natural Gut Flora', I'd suggest removing 'It's a well-known fact that' from the first sentence. Well-known facts rarely are.

- Nitpick: 'Our friendly and rapidly-replicating E. coli out-competes pathogens'. 'Out-competes' should be 'out-compete' as 'E. coli' is used in the plural.

- You could link to A1002763 where Vitamin K is mentioned.


Well done again.

RhoMuNuQ

Hi RhoMuNuQ, thanks for your comments

- Changing the title? I'd rather not, I like it, and since the whole thing is about how E. coli is both (that's the whole point) I think it's more than relevant.

- Taxonomic family names are never italicised, only capitalised. Only genera and species are supposed to be in italics.

- Ah! Links, I knew there was something I'd forgotten to do! Thank you

- 'Well known fact': I agree, they rarely are.

- Nitpick: could go either way but I think I'm with you on this one.



Ste

Update:

- Added more links than the two RhoMuNuQ suggested.



Ste

Sorry about the suggestion to italicise a family name - you can tell when I haven't properly proofread one of my posts. I'm glad most of them were useful.

I look forward to seeing this entry on the Front Page.

RhoMuNuQ

Simulpost!

I think the link to A1050535 is going to get edited out!

RhoMuNuQ

I think I don't preview before posting about, hmm, 50% of the time. And 75% of those times I regret doing it.

'I look forward to seeing this entry on the Front Page.'
Thanks, your input's been dead useful.



Ste

Perhaps it miiiiight.

By the way, it would be far more scary like this:

RhoMuNuQ

Now that's just silly!

Mornin'

good morning! ah, rho, i see you've been here already. ste, when rho mentioned that he had a reputation to maintain, it's because he's my proof-reader . thanks for looking through, rho! ste, did we include a link to the genetics article?

Um, what genetics article?

aargh! i'm sorry! that's the link danny put in my article for my microbes thing... it's too bad that pcr article isn't up, we could link to that one...

Ok. So there is no genetics link.

I'll do that PCR one someday...

Ste

Well done both of you, it's a triffic entry

I think I have to disagree with Rho - I rather like the 'Friend or Foe' part of the title. Most of us who have heard of E. Coli probably only know of it as a foe, and I reckon that leaving the title as it is might encourage people to find out more about the blighter.

Should 'microorganisms' be hyphenated? 'Micro-organisms'?

"There is probably no infection that it is not capable of..."
What about... Beri-Beri, Malaria, Elephantiasis, Leprosy, Legionnaire's Disease, Dengue Fever, Measles, Chickenpox?
Perhaps that particular sentence is a little, er, over-inflated

"...causing it to haemorrhage and causing other horrible conditions."
How about 'causing it to haemorrhage and spread infection throughout the abdominal cavity.'?

"... to be lost from the body through the anal route."
I think 'through the anus' would do just fine

"Interestingly, E. coli was the leading cause of diarrhoea among US troops during the Gulf War, more than half of which suffered more than one episode of the disease."
Hmmm... that sentence doesn't look quite right.
'Interestingly, E. coli was the leading cause of diarrhoea among US troops during the 1991 Gulf War, better than half of whom suffered two or more episodes of the disease.'
That's the best I can come up with right now... it's getting late

"...has been the model of almost everything from metabolic pathways to genetic regulation to sex"
It's been no model for any kind of sex I've ever had matey boy A little more explanation there please

"The natural gut flora also secretes vitamin B12 and K"
As 'flora' is plural, 'secretes' must be 'secrete', and 'vitamin' ought to be 'vitamins' because you mention two of them. Although... I guess 'flora' could be singular - collective Is there a linguist in the house?

"Those who do not have these bacteria helping them digest their milk are thus lactose-intolerant"
I saw figures quoted of 20% of European descendents, 80% of African descendents and almost 100% of Asian descendents. I don't know how accurate this is.

Ehhh, that's me lot - I've got to go to bed. I'll leave it to someone else to look for any other improvements that could be made.

Ste, Farlander, you've come up with a little belter

Hi Gosho

Thanks for the comments, and the praise

Microorganisms, hmm. I think, like cooperative, it can be both. MS Word wants to change it to 'micro organisms' all the time which is blatantly wrong! I'll look into it.

Re: 'no infection it's not capapble of'
I think what we're getting at here is that it's capable of infecting everything in humans. I.e., the lungs (pnuemonia), the brain (meningitis), the blood (septicaemia), etc. Does that make sense now? It should be clearer shouldn't it?

'causing it to haemorrhage and spread infection throughout the abdominal cavity.'
Agreed. Done.

And 'through the anus' it is.

Yep, your Gulf War comment is spot-on too...

Model organism for sex... Well, it's actually true. It was detailed more in the entry itself, but it was removed as I had to be harsh due to the entry getting way to long. I might just remove that too. It does pique the interest a bit too much to not mention it again. I put the more sedate and less racy 'DNA replication' in there instead.

I think you're right about flora and secrete. Thanks for pointing out the vitamins mistake.

Thanks for the lactose-stats. They'll make a fine footnote.

Thanks for the very, very helpful post Gosho. Beer for you!

Ste

hello, gosho! thanks for having a look at our article.

yeah, we like the 'friend or foe' bit as well 'e. coli' on its own sounds rather dull, and i suppose we would lose half our audience if we didn't sort of tell them what it *is* in the title. no, microorganisms is fine as one word - well, all the textbook don't hyphenate them, so we're not going to either

"There is probably no infection that it is not capable of..."
What about... Beri-Beri, Malaria, Elephantiasis, Leprosy, Legionnaire's Disease, Dengue Fever, Measles, Chickenpox? --> er, there is a bit of difference between infection and disease. different diseases may have the same symptoms or organs infected. like for example, e. coli may not cause legionnaire's disease (did you read my ld articles, btw? ), 'cause obviously only legionella does that, but it *can* cause pneumonia, which is a symptom of legie's disease. although you are probably right about it being a bit inflated... we'll see if we can get it changed to something like, 'there are not many infections that it is not capable of' - would that be better? ste, if you're there, could you please change this? thanks.

er, could you tell me where it is you saw the haemorrhage bit? i'm getting a bit cross-eyed scanning the article. thanks.

ok, embarrassing subject here, gosho ... when we're talking about sex, we're talking about sex as what it originally was - a means of exchanging genetic information, and thus a mechanism of evolution and change. it was only much, much later that macroorganisms developed sex as a pleasure activity. (i don't think the little bugs derive much pleasure from it. then again...)

thanks for pointing out the vitamins bit - again, ste? sorry, i'd do it, only you're the one with access to the article. i think that 'flora' can be used as both singular and plural - it can be thought of as millions of little critters, or as one big collective body comprising millions of little critters. we use the word 'everybody' in the singular form, don't we? as in 'everybody loves raymond' (it would sound really, really funny if we said 'everybody love raymond'!!! ) of course, i'm no linguist either, although it's my hope that our subed will be!

hey, again - thanks for coming by

Oops, I think I edited it before you got to it, Far.