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1 the population, or are already epidemic. 
2 C, epidemic strains of E. coli are well known 
3 causing, for example, diarrhea in adults and in infants. 
4 They have been a particular problem among infants. To 
5 quote Dr. Bradley Sack in a recent editorial in the 
6 New England Journal of Medicine : "Benign-appearing, but 
7 enterotox in-producing Escherichia col i have been 
8 recognized as important worldwide etiologic agents 
9 in diarrheal illness of children and adults." 
10 D, in numerous well-studied cases, the patho- 
11 genicity of E. coli strains for a particular host is 
12 associated with plasmid genes — that is, the plasmids 
13 that are the hosts in the recombinant technology for 
14 the foreign DNA: antibiotic resistance, enterotoxin 
15 production, production of proteins that allow the coli 
16 to colonize a site that they normally wouldn't — for 
17 example, the K 88 antigen associated with disease in 
18 piglets. 
19 The failure of the guidelines to point out 
20 the clear analogy between the known pathogenicity 
21 associated with proteins coded for by plasmids, which 
22 interact with the mammalian cell and therefore cause 
23 pathogenesis, and the introduction through recombinant 
24 DNA technology of a gene into a plasmid, coding for 
25 a protein that, since it comes from a mammal, is very 
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