When his boss called to complain that the time-sensitive documents he was waiting for still hadn't arrived, Victor worried that the courier responsible for delivery may secretly be on their competitor's payroll and had sabotaged them on purpose.
Virulence factors are molecules produced by pathogens (bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa) that contribute to the pathogenicity of the organism and enable them to achieve the following: 1  colonization of a niche in the host (this includes attachment to cells). 2  immunoevasion, evasion of the host's immune response.
Because V. cholerae cells are relatively small compared to host cells, thousands of bacteria must infect each cell to cause disease. c. Because the major virulence factor of V. cholerae is cholera toxin, large numbers of bacteria are required to produce enough toxin to cause disease.