1.4 Virulence
E.coli is able to behave like a virus by misleading a body cell to engulf it by endocytosis. Once the E.coli has entered the cytoplasm of the host cell, it can add part of it’s genome to the host cell’s. It can also act as a parasite once in the host cell by using the host cell’s resources and producing toxin swhich eventually kill the host cell. However this is not characteristic of the K-12 laboratory strain.