Nocardia farcinica is a species of

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 ...

, once thought to be associated with farcy, and a member of the genus '' Nocardia''. This species is very similar in phenotype to ''

Nocardia asteroides ''Nocardia asteroides'' is a species of '' Nocardia''. It can cause nocardiosis, a severe pulmonary infection in immunocompromised hosts. References Further reading * External linksType strain of ''Nocardia asteroides'' at Bac''Dive'' - t ...

'', to the degree that some isolates of ''N. asteroides'' were later found to be ''Nocardia farcinica''.

Pathogenicity

''N. farcinica'' may be a causative agent of

nocardiosis Nocardiosis is an infectious disease affecting either the lungs (''pulmonary nocardiosis'') or the whole body (''systemic nocardiosis''). It is due to infection by a bacterium of the genus '' Nocardia'', most commonly ''Nocardia asteroides'' or '' ...

or of secondary infections in immunocompromised patients. Strains of this species have been isolated from human brain abscesses.

Genome

''N. farcinica'' contains a 6 million base pair genome with an average

GC content In molecular biology and genetics, GC-content (or guanine-cytosine content) is the percentage of nitrogenous bases in a DNA or RNA molecule that are either guanine (G) or cytosine (C). This measure indicates the proportion of G and C bases out ...

of 70.8%. A sequenced strain, IFM 10152, is also known to contain two plasmids, pNF1 pNF2. The chromosome encodes 5,674 potential protein-coding

open reading frame In molecular biology, open reading frames (ORFs) are defined as spans of DNA sequence between the start and stop codons. Usually, this is considered within a studied region of a prokaryotic DNA sequence, where only one of the six possible readin ...

s. This genome may have undergone numerous gene duplication events as a result of adapting to new environments.

References

External links

Type strain of ''Nocardia farcinica'' at Bac''Dive'' - the Bacterial Diversity Metadatabase
Mycobacteriales Bacteria described in 1889 {{actinobacteria-stub