This has been emphasized by the Necrotizing Enterocolitis Workgroup of the International Neonatal Consortium, which highlighted the need for significantly reducing the clinical burden of NEC by identifying novel comprehensive hypotheses of the disease.4 In the present study, we used strains previously isolated from NEC suffering infants and showed significantly increased clinical scores and NEC lesions in quails and linked the specific inactivation of hbd in the same strains leading to a measurable loss in enteropathogenicity. This evidence concerns the gene HBD and necrotizing enterocolitis.