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Gut Pathogens BioMed Central Review Open Access Adhesive threads of extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli Esther-Maria Antão*, Lothar H Wieler and Christa Ewers Address: Institut für Mikrobiologie und Tierseuchen, Freie Universität Berlin, Philippstr. 13, 10115 Berlin, Germany Email: Esther-Maria Antão* - antao.em@vetmed.fu-berlin.de; Lothar H Wieler - wieler.lothar@vetmed.fu-berlin.de; Christa Ewers - ewers.christa@vetmed.fu-berlin.de * Corresponding author Published: 10 December 2009 Received: 20 November 2009 Accepted: 10 December 2009 Gut Pathogens 2009, 1:22 doi:10.1186/1757-4749-1-22 This article is available from: /content/1/1/22 © 2009 Antão et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract The ability to adhere to host surfaces is by far the most vital step in the successful colonization by microbial pathogens. Colonization begins with the attachment of the bacterium to receptors expressed by cells forming the lining of the mucosa. Long hair like extracellular appendages called fimbriae, produced by most Gram-negative pathogens, mediate specific attachment to the epithelial cell surface. Associated with the fimbriae is a protein called an adhesin, which directs high-affinity binding t