Tight Junctions and Enteropathogenic E. coli

Enteropathogenic breaking the intestinal tight junction E . coli : barrier

Enteropathogenic (EPEC) causes acute intestinal infections in infants in E. coli the developing world. Infection typically spreads through contaminated food and water and leads to severe, watery diarrhea. EPEC attaches to the intestinal epithelial cells and directly injects virulence factors which modulate multiple signaling pathways leading to host cell dysfunction. However, the molecular mech...

Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) and enteropathogenic E. coli

Enteropathogenic E. coli interactions with host cells.

Enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) interacts with intestinal epithelial cells, causing diarrhea and associated diseases. This pathogen binds to epithelial cells using sophisticated mechanisms that exploit existing epithelial signal transduction pathways and host cytoskeletal components, ultimately resulting in the bacterium resting upon a pedestal on host cell surfaces. Recent data indicates that ...

Enteropathogenic and enterohemorrhagic E. coli: ecology, pathogenesis, and evolution

The gastrointestinal pathogens enteropathogenic and enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EPEC and EHEC) continue to pose a threat to human health worldwide. While EPEC remains a significant cause of diarrhea in low-income countries, EHEC is more common as a food or water-borne pathogen in industrialized countries. A major difference between EPEC and EHEC is that EPEC has only a human reservoir of infecti...

Tight Junctions

Epithelial cells cover the body (e.g. skin), cavities (e.g. stomach, uterus, bladder) and ducts (e.g. renal tubules, intestine) of multicellular organisms, and thus constitute the frontier between the individual and the external milieu. In areas that withstand strong mechanical or chemical stress (e.g. skin, esophagus, cornea, vagina) epithelia are stratified, whereas in the rest of the body, t...