They report their results in the December 2000 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology .
All bacteria have certain proteins they display on their surface.
These proteins, called antigens, are distinctive, like fingerprints, and can be used to identify the bacteria. In the study the researchers placed the bacteria in distilled water for 21 months to simulate starvation conditions that might occur during bacterial contamination of recreational or untreated drinking water. They found that after the prolonged period without food, the bacteria could still grow, but could no longer be detected by the O157 O antigen diagnostic tests. However, a method which does not depend on immunologic techniques should be used to test for enterohemorrhagic E. coli in foods and other environments, when the organism is suspected to have been under starvation conditions for a long period.