Phylogeny of Escherichia Coli Strains.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli

A large number of strains belonging to this species have been isolated and characterised. In addition to serotype (vide supra), they can be classified according to their phylogeny, i.e. the inferred evolutionary history, as shown below where the species is divided into six groups.

The link between phylogenetic distance ("relatedness") and pathology is small, e.g. the O157:H7 serotype strains, which form a clade ("an exclusive group")—group E below—are all enterohaemorragic strains (EHEC), but not all EHEC strains are closely related. In fact, four different species of Shigella are nested among E. colistrains (vide supra), while Escherichia albertii and Escherichia fergusonii are outside of this group. All commonly used research strains of E. coli belong to group A and are derived mainly from Clifton's K-12 strain (λ⁺ F⁺; O16) and to a lesser degree from d'Herelle's Bacillus coli strain (B strain)(O7).