Keith Nockels, Academic Librarian, University of Leicester
This column started life as a blog post (https://browsing.blogspot.com/2024/07/escherichia-coli.html) with resources related to the current outbreak of E. coli infection in the UK, linked to salad leaves used in prepacked sandwiches and salads sold in several retailers.
Below are some resources about Shiga toxin producing E. coli (STEC), which is causing the problem in the UK, then about E. coli and E. coli infection in general, and then some open textbooks on medical microbiology. These textbooks are part of a wider set of open educational resources (OER) – perhaps OER deserves a column of its own!
Shiga toxin producing E. coli (STEC)
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/shiga-toxin-producing-escherichia-coli-stec
Public Health Agency (Northern Ireland)
https://www.publichealth.hscni.net/directorate-public-health/health-protection/Shiga%20toxin-producing%20E.coli%20%28STEC%29
Public Health Scotland
https://publichealthscotland.scot/our-areas-of-work/health-protection/infectious-diseases/shiga-toxin-producing-escherichia-coli-stec/overview/
A press release from the UK Health Security Agency is at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/e-coli-advice-issued-amid-rise-in-cases
E. coli
General E. coli and health information from:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/about/index.html
NHS Inform (NHS Scotland)
https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/infections-and-poisoning/escherichia-coli-e-coli-o157/
UK Health Security Agency
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/escherichia-coli-e-coli-guidance-data-and-analysis
Then some more general resources:
EcoCyc
https://ecocyc.org/
A database for E. coli K-12 MG1655, performing “literature-based curation of the entire genome” and covering transcriptional regulation, transporters, and metabolic pathways.
EcoliWiki
https://ecoliwiki.org/colipedia/index.php/Welcome_to_EcoliWiki
Information about non-pathogenic E. coli. PortEco, the producer of this site, is described in a paper in the 2014 annual Database issue of Nucleic Acids Research, at https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/42/D1/D677/1060569.
Encyclopedia of Life
https://www.eol.org/pages/972688
An overview, including articles, data and maps.
National Center for Biotechnology Information
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/all/?term=escherichia%20coli
Results across all NCBI databases, with a direct link to the Taxonomy database. The PubMed link gives you absolutely everything about E. coli, so for STEC, this link – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%28e+coli+OR+escherichia+coli%29+shiga+toxin&filter=years.2024-2025 – specifically for Shiga toxin producing E. coli papers from 2024 and 2025 (thinking ahead!), might be more effective.
Medical microbiology open textbooks
These are all freely available. Some are not that recent.
Baron, Medical microbiology, 1996
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7627/
Part of the NCBI Bookshelf collection of (generally older) books.
Bruslind, General microbiology, 2019
https://open.oregonstate.education/generalmicrobiology/
Part of the open educational resources site at Oregon State University.
Hunt, Microbiology and immunology online, no date
https://www.microbiologybook.org/
Based on the second-year medical student course at the University of South Carolina, but no date given. There are translations of some sections into Turkish, French, Slovak and Vietnamese.
Kirk, Microbiology for earth scientists, 2023
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/microbiology-for-earth-scientists
Part of the Open Textbook Library based at the University of Minnesota. The Open Textbook Library links to some books on other platforms.
OpenStax, Microbiology
https://openstax.org/details/books/microbiology/
A collaborative project between OpenStax and the American Society for Microbiology, published in 2016, but the web version was last updated in January 2024. There is a Canadian version of this, produced for microbiology and allied health students and with more up to date information in some areas, and Canadian examples, on Ontario’s Open Library Publishing Platform, at https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/microbio/. The book is, I think, also at https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Microbiology/Microbiology_(OpenStax)
Todar’s Online textbook of bacteriology, 2015
https://textbookofbacteriology.net/
Based on course materials from University of Wisconsin Madison. On the launch page, the point is made that “[…] beginning in 2015, only minimal revisions or corrections have been made to the text, and the current presentation should not be considered up-to-date beyond that time. However, the basic tenets of microbiology presented herein are reliably accurate, even if nomenclature or vocabulary is outdated.”
I plan columns about:
generative artificial intelligence (things like Copilot, Gemini and ChatGPT) and health/healthcare; sustainability and health/healthcare.
If there are sites you know of about either and you’d like them included, please do contact me.
Other ideas for future columns are also welcome to help prevent it being too biased to English higher education (or any of my personal characteristics!).
Keith Nockels, Academic Librarian (Medicine, Clinical Sciences and Healthcare), Library and Learning Services, University of Leicester, UK
Email: khn5@le.ac.uk
Tel. (via Teams): +44 (0)116 229 7446
Health Libraries Group 