It is circulating in poultry stocks, but is considered a "low pathogenic" virus that is not sickening birds.

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But the complete El Tor genome now allows Dr Mekalanos and his colleagues to start comparing it with non-pathogenic strains.

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Many of the bacteria in question are genuinely mutualistic with their hosts, helping the process of digestion or warding off pathogenic bugs.

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"The social framework in Greece has become pathogenic -- we have a morbid social environment where one of its symptoms is suicide, " he adds.

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The collaboration resulted in the discovery of a new pathogenic yeast that can cause disease in humans and a paper published in the journal Medical Mycology.

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In this research the scientists created a synthetic viral shell, but lacking its pathogenic RNA interior - the genetic material the virus uses to replicate itself.

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Although many of the genes encoding El Tor's pathogenic machinery were already known, the new sequence does reveal a number of unexpected metabolic pathways that may prove useful for drug development, according to Dr Mekalanos.

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Cholera outbreaks, such as the one that hit Peru and its neighbours in the early 1990s, tend to happen suddenly, as the formerly benign bacteria turn on their pathogenic apparatus when they hit the body.

ECONOMIST: The cholera genome

"The large number of beverages and soda fountain machines containing E. coli is still of considerable concern... and suggests that more pathogenic strains of bacteria could persist and thrive in soda fountain machines if introduced, " the authors wrote.

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