From Escherich to the Escherichia coli genome

Around 1900, Escherich's brother-in-law, Meinhard von Pfaundler, sent the B coli commune strain from Professor Escherich's laboratory to Herbert Durham at the Pathological Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, UK.2 Durham gave the original Escherich strain to Alfred MacConkey and Harriette Chick, then at the Royal Commission on Sewage Disposal in Liverpool, UK, who acknowledged the gift in their 1900 and 1901 studies published in the Thomson-Yates Laboratories reports.3-6 MacConkey then moved to the Lister Institute in November 19017 and later was joined by Harriette Chick, who after graduating from London University, went on to become the first woman to be appointed a research fellow at the Lister Institute, much to the displeasure of some of her male colleagues.8 Strain collections that accompanied MacConkey and Chick from Liverpool formed the basis of MacConkey's landmark 1905 paper describing B coli and lactose-fermenting bacteria.5 The B coli strain was subsequently used by Arthur Boycott, then assistant pathologist at the Lister Institute, and referred to as the "original Escherich strain" in his work on typhoid fever published in 1906.9 This stock strain was archived as B coli communis at the Lister Institute in 1911 by Francis Bainbridge,10 and the institute's collections became the NCTC in 1920,11 under the curation of Ralph St John-Brooks and Mabel Rhodes.