Editorial: The many facets of Escherichia coli: from beneficial bug and genetic workhorse to dangerous menace for plant and creature

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Abstract
Escherichia coli is one of the most investigated and multifaceted bacteria which is harbored by the gut of warm blooded animals and humans as well as our environment. Belonging to the family of Enterobacteriaceae, from the evolutionary perspective it possesses a particularly close phylogenetic relatedness to Shigella and also to Citrobacter and Salmonella. Due to its specific nature and outstanding versatility, it has become one of the most popular experimental prokaryotic microbes to be used by the microbiological scientific community. Substantially, it has aided a broad range of genetic experimentation in biotechnology, for example, to generate libraries of DNA sequences from other species, to produce recombinant proteins and to develop tailored cloning technologies. Since 1997 when the genomic content of about 4400 genes was published for the laboratory strain K-12 derivative MG1655 (Blattner et al.1997), a very dynamic development has taken place whereby the knowledge collected on E. coli as a model organism has markedly contributed to our common understanding of the function of genes and their stability. Likewise the organism's broad interaction with other microorganisms and phages, based on organelles, surface structures, receptors and lectins, has served as a powerful model. So far, there seems to be no other bacterium like E. coli in nature that has induced so many advancements in the fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology (Blount 2015; Gratia 2017).

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