Intestinal Invaders
These pink and purple ovals may look like colorful hard candies, but you should avoid eating them. They are enteropathogenic Escherichia coli – bacteria that can cause serious illness and even death.
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DownloadIntestinal Invaders
These pink and purple ovals may look like colorful hard candies, but you should avoid eating them. They are enteropathogenic Escherichia coli – bacteria that can cause serious illness and even death.
What am I looking at?
This is an image of fluorescently labeled enteropathogenic Escherichia coli bacteria – commonly referred to as E. coli – that have infected a human cell. The bacteria are pink/purple (1). The actin protein in the cell’s cytoskeleton is green (2), and the nucleus of the cell is the large blue sphere in the center of the image (3).
Biology in the background
Enteropathogenic E. coli bacteria cause an infection in humans that results in severe diarrhea. The infection is spread through eating or drinking contaminated food or water. Today, large-scale E. coli infections are rare and usually occur due to contamination in food-processing or -packaging plants. Thankfully, these infections can be treated with antibiotics.
An E. coli bacterium is about 2 micrometers long, or roughly 40 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
Technique
This image was created using fluorescence microscopy.
Katrina Velle, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth