Following the recent deadly E. coli outbreaks in Europe, researchers have released the first complete map of the genome and plasmids. The data set is being released under a public domain licence and has a DOI to make it easier to cite.

The genome is publicly available at ftp://ftp.genomics.org.cn/pub/Ecoli_TY-2482/Escherichia_coli_TY-2482.chromosome.20110616.fa.gz and the plasmids at ftp://ftp.genomics.org.cn/pub/Ecoli_TY-2482/Escherichia_coli_TY-2482.plasmid.20110616.fa.gz.

The free, public release of this data has spurred progress in understanding the infection and how to combat it. More detail on the story is here.