= Escherichia coli
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{wiki}
= E. coli
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{synonym}
<Escherichia coli>, often abbreviated <E. coli>, is a bacterial <species> widely used to study <DNA replication> and <gene expression>. Its <chromosome> is in a <nucleoid>, and its <ribosomes> work in the <cytoplasm>, outside any <cell nucleus>. A result from one laboratory strain should not automatically be generalized to every member of the <species>.
The original 1997 report by Blattner and colleagues presented the K-12 MG1655 <genome> sequence as a circular <chromosome> of $4{,}639{,}221$ <base pairs>. See https://www.genome.wisc.edu/sequencing/U00096.1.htm[Blattner laboratory: original K-12 sequence and 1997 paper]. As a bookkeeping example, one complete round of <DNA replication> from one such <chromosome> produces two daughter sequence copies totaling $2\times4{,}639{,}221=9{,}278{,}442$ <base pairs>. This is twice the copied material, not twice the length of the reference <genome>; it does not specify the instantaneous <DNA> content of a rapidly growing <E. coli> cell.
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