FADD and chronic cystitis: To study the involvement of the redundant genes in the FAS II pathway in the maintenance of the OM barrier, we used two model UPEC strains, CFT073 (a drug-sensitive reference pyelonephritis isolate) and EC958 (a reference MDR ST131 cystitis isolate), and constructed null mutants of the fabH, fabF, fabR, fadR, and fadD genes.