''Aerococcus'' is a genus in the phylum
Bacillota
The Bacillota (synonym Firmicutes) are a phylum of bacteria, most of which have gram-positive cell wall structure. The renaming of phyla such as Firmicutes in 2021 remains controversial among microbiologists, many of whom continue to use the earl ...
(
Bacteria
Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometr ...
). The genus was first identified in 1953 from samples of air and dust as a
catalase-negative,
gram
The gram (originally gramme; SI unit symbol g) is a unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one one thousandth of a kilogram.
Originally defined as of 1795 as "the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to th ...
-positive
coccus
A coccus (plural cocci) is any bacterium or archaeon that has a spherical, ovoid, or generally round shape. Bacteria are categorized based on their shapes into three classes: cocci (spherical-shaped), bacillus (rod-shaped) and spiral ( of whi ...
that grew in small clusters.
They were subsequently found in hospital environments and meat-curing brines. It has been difficult to identify as it resembles
alpha-hemolytic ''Streptococcus'' on
blood agar plates and is difficult to identify by biochemical means.
Sequencing of
16S rRNA 16S rRNA may refer to:
* 16S ribosomal RNA
16 S ribosomal RNA (or 16 S rRNA) is the RNA component of the 30S subunit of a prokaryotic ribosome ( SSU rRNA). It binds to the Shine-Dalgarno sequence and provides most of the SSU structure.
The g ...
has become the gold standard for identification, but other techniques such as
MALDI-TOF
In mass spectrometry, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) is an ionization technique that uses a laser energy absorbing matrix to create ions from large molecules with minimal fragmentation. It has been applied to the analysis of ...
have also been useful for identifying both the genus and species.
Etymology
The name ''Aerococcus'' derives from the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
''aer, aeros'' (ἀήρ, ἀέρος), air;
New Latin
New Latin (also called Neo-Latin or Modern Latin) is the revival of Literary Latin used in original, scholarly, and scientific works since about 1500. Modern scholarly and technical nomenclature, such as in zoological and botanical taxonomy ...
''coccus'' (from Greek''kokkos'' (κόκκος)), a berry; New Latin ''Aerococcus'', air coccus.
The name was given based on its round shape and that it was first discovered in air samples.
Species
The genus contains these species:
[
* '' A. christensenii'' Collins ''et al.'', 1999, named after the Danish microbiologist Jens J. Christensen
* '' A. sanguinicola'' Lawson ''et al.'', 2001 (from the Latin for blood-dweller)
* '' A. suis'' Vela ''et al.'', 2007 (Latin for "of a hog")
* '' A. urinae'' Aguirre & Collins, 1992 (Latin for "of urine")
* '' A. urinaeequi'' (Garvie, 1988) Felis ''et al.'', 2005 (Latin for "of the urine of a horse", source of isolation of the type strain)
* '' A. urinaehominis'' Lawson ''et al.'', 2001 (Latin for "of the urine of a human", source of isolation of the type strain)]type species
In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specime ...
of the genus (Latin for "making green", producing a green color).
See also
* Bacterial taxonomy
Bacterial taxonomy is the taxonomy, i.e. the rank-based classification, of bacteria.
In the scientific classification established by Carl Linnaeus, each species has to be assigned to a genus ( binary nomenclature), which in turn is a lower lev ...
* Microbiology
References
Bacteria genera
Lactobacillales
{{Lactobacilli-stub