Just her, she's the scientist.
I thought you were both scientists, my bad.
Most strains of e. coli are harmless. E coli is all up in your intestines right now. There are two main types of e. coli- enteric (in your gut) and hemorrhagic (from outside the gut, causes internal bleeding due to vascular dialation from a toxin produced by the bug). It's when you get a virulent strain such as O157:H7 (the O and the H denote various phenotypes of their O-antigen and their Hemagglutin), which has gotten a lot of press due to food-borne illnesses stemming from mass-produced food plants, then you have a problem. We use e. coli in our lab all the time- it's exceptionally genetically pliable and harmless.
Thank you very much for that. I knew next to nothing about e.coli until I read your post.