Proteus (bacterium)

Proteus is a genus of Gram-negativebacteria. Proteus spp. are rod-shaped, facultatively anaerobic, and motile bacteria that exhibit swarming motility, allowing them to migrate across solid surfaces at temperatures 20 and 37 °C. Proteus spp. are widely distributed in nature as saprophytes, occurring in decomposing animal matter, sewage, manure-amended soil, and the mammaliangastrointestinal tract. They are opportunistic pathogens, commonly associated with urinary tract and septic infections, often of nosocomial origin .

The term Proteus signifies changeability of form, as personified in the Homeric poems in Proteus, "the old man of the sea", who tends the sealflocks of Poseidon and has the gift of endless transformation. The first use of the term “Proteus” in bacteriological nomenclature was made by Hauser (1885), who described under this term three types of organisms which he isolated from putrefied meat.