Parallel evolutionary trajectories rewire enteropathogenic Escherichia coli adhesion to restore host attachment
Noam Yedidi, Klil Cohen-Yaron, Miriam Ravins, Michal Bejerano-Sagie, Sigal Ben-Yehuda, Ilan Rosenshine · 2026
Read Parallel evolutionary trajectories rewire enteropathogenic Escherichia coli adhesion to restore host attachment by Noam Yedidi, Klil Cohen-Yaron, Miriam Ravins, Michal Bejerano-Sagie, Sigal Ben-Yehuda, Ilan Rosenshine (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13540154.txt.
Description
Noam Yedidi and co-authors published a 2026 study on how a gut bacterium re-evolves the ability to cling to its host. A disease-causing strain of Escherichia coli sickens children with lasting diarrhea. The typical strain grips the gut wall with hair-like pili. A rising atypical strain lacks those pili yet still infects. The team asked how it regained its grip.
They built a non-sticking ancestor in the lab and let evolution run, keeping only the cells that adhered. Sticky descendants arose along parallel paths. First, a switchable set of fine hairs, type I fimbriae, flipped on. Then two alternative routes refined the attachment further. The experiment shows evolution solving the same problem repeatedly, with the same opening move. The findings help explain the atypical strain's spread. They also warn that attachment, a key step in infection, can be re-invented quickly by more than one road.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Noam Yedidi, Klil Cohen-Yaron, Miriam Ravins, Michal Bejerano-Sagie, Sigal Ben-Yehuda, Ilan Rosenshine |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 36 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |