“…Together, Tafi and EPS form the extracellular matrix that results in a colony morphotype that appears red, dry and rough (rdar) on Congo red agar (Romling et al, 2000;White et al, 2003), which is highly conserved in most Salmonella and E. coli strains (Arnqvist et al, 1992;Collinson et al, 1991Collinson et al, , 1992Doran et al, 1993;Gerstel & Romling, 2003;White et al, 2006;Zogaj et al, 2003). Tafi are essential for the formation of the extracellular matrix , which is involved in multicellular aggregation (Romling et al, 2000), pellicle formation (Collinson et al, 1993), biofilm formation (Austin et al, 1998;Gerstel & Romling, 2003;Prigent-Combaret et al, 2000;Vidal et al, 1998), environmental persistence , and adherence to plant tissues (Barak et al, 2005). Tafi also have pathogenesis-related properties in that they accelerate amyloidosis in mice (Lundmark et al, 2005), bind fibronectin (Arnqvist et al, 1992;Collinson et al, 1993;Olsen et al, 2002), are proinflammatory (Bian et al, 2000(Bian et al, , 2001Persson et al, 2003;Tukel et al, 2005), and enhance adherence and invasion of eukaryotic cells (Dibb-Fuller et al, 1999;Kim & Kim, 2004;La Ragione et al, 2000;Sukupolvi et al, 1997).…”