In the muddy trenches of World War I, thousands of soldiers on both sides fell ill with dysentery, a diarrheal disease often spread by contaminated water. Curiously, one German soldier deployed in the Balkans didn’t become sick when the rest of his comrades did. When scientist Alfred Nissle isolated a strain of E. coli from the soldier’s stool in 1917, he found that it had strong protective effects against Shigella bacteria, a cause of dysentery.
Over the past hundred years, this protective strain—now known as E. coli Nissle—has been used as a probiotic to promote gut health and treat gastrointestinal conditions like inflammatory bowel disease. Now, scientists are genetically engineering
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