Fundamentals Of Microbiology 10th Edition by Jeffrey Pommerville

Exercise 19

In 1976, an outbreak of pulmonary infections among participants at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia led to the identification of a new disease, Legionnaires' disease. The bacterial organism, Legionella pneumophila, responsible for the disease had never before been known to be pathogenic. From your knowledge of bacterial genetics, can you postulate how it might have acquired the ability to cause disease