Chickens and guinea fowl are commonly reared in Gambian homes as affordable sources of
protein. Using standard microbiological techniques, we obtained 68 caecal isolates of
Escherichia coli from 10 chickens and 9 guinea fowl in rural Gambia. After Illumina whole-
genome sequencing, 28 sequence types were detected in the isolates (4 of them novel), of
which ST155 was the most common (22/68, 32%). These strains span four of the eight main
phylogroups of E. coli, with phylogroups B1 and A being most prevalent. Nearly a third of the …