Escherichia coli

Some of the discoveries made in E. coli have provided an invaluable framework for understanding biological processes in more complex organisms. As mentioned above, many fundamental processes that are shared by all living things are most easily studied in this simple bacterial model. Furthermore,E. coli has served as a model for understanding the biology of other bacteria.

The ways in which E. coli interacts with the human body are in many cases very similar to the ways that other disease-causing organisms act. Therefore, this model organism has been important in the study of human health, and has allowed researchers to ask questions about bacteria in general (for example, how antibiotics stop infections, or how the immune system fights off disease).