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Rebecca Voelker

JAMA. 1999;282:933.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Researchers in Sweden and the United States have collaborated to produce the first three-dimensional snapshots of key steps in Escherichia coli infection of the bladder and kidney.

The focus of their work was examining how pili, the sticky hairs that allow E coli and other bacteria to cling to tissue, are formed and transported to the bacterial cell surface. Without pili, bacteria are swept away by such bodily fluids as urine and are unable to cause infection.

At Uppsala Biomedical Center, scientists captured x-ray images of a pilus subunit attached to a chaperone protein that transports subunits to E coli's surface. Part of this protein complex then adheres to mannose, a sugar attached to a receptor in the bladder lining, giving the bacteria a foothold for infection. Meanwhile, collaborators at Washington University School of Medicine obtained images of a different protein complex involved in connecting the pilus . . . [Full Text of this Article]