A researcher at the University of California Riverside spent a year building a model of a human colon out of commonplace materials, then "fed" it with real food, to study how bacteria spreads from feces into the water supply. "I hadn't seen any research done that used a model colon to find out what happened downstream" said Ian Marcus, the recently graduated UC Riverside PhD student who built the system, told The Verge. What Marcus and his colleagues found out is worrisome: when mixed with human fecal matter, disease-causing e. coli bacteria can survive longer in groundwater than previous studies indicated. "People might think that if there's an outbreak that's been contained, 'we're good,' but it turns out the bacteria could stay around...
via The Verge - All Posts http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/28/4373518/human-colon-model-shows-ecoli-can-last-longer http://www.theverge.com/