1 Taxonomy of Prokaryotes – Introduction

Publication date: 2011 Source:Methods in Microbiology, Volume 38 Author(s): Fred A. Rainey , Aharon Oren Prokaryote diversity has been the subject of increased attention in the past two decades. The most accepted concept, considered to be pragmatic and useful for species definition, is the so-called phylo-phenetic species concept—a monophyletic and genomically coherent cluster of individual organisms (strains) that show a high degree of overall similarity in many independent characteristics—and is diagnosable by one or more discriminative phenotypic properties. The species concept is based on a polyphasic approach, which includes description of diagnostic phenotypic features combined with genomic properties. Individually, many of the phenotypic and chemotaxonomic characters used as diagnostic properties are insufficient to delineate a species, but together they provide sufficient descriptive information to allow the definition of a species. Different properties have different resolving power; some are species specific, while others are valuable for discriminating genera, families, and orders. Properties tested generally include morphological characters, information on motility, the mode of nutrition and energy generation, the cells' relationship to molecular oxygen, temperature, pH, tolerance toward and requirement for salt and many others. More specific tests such as serotyping or phage typing may be necessary for certain groups of microorganisms to obtain a reliab...

Source: Methods in Microbiology - October 12, 2014 Category: Microbiology Source Type: research