Premium
Fastidious Gram‐negative bacteria: Meeting the diagnostic challenge with nucleic acid analysis
Author(s) -
TØNJUM TONE,
BØVRE KJELL,
JUNI ELLIOT
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
apmis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.909
H-Index - 88
eISSN - 1600-0463
pISSN - 0903-4641
DOI - 10.1111/j.1699-0463.1995.tb01414.x
Subject(s) - fastidious organism , biology , computational biology , nucleic acid , microbiology and biotechnology , genetics , bacteria
The extended panorama of fastidious Gram‐negative bacteria (FGNB) as opportunistic etiological agents of infectious diseases in immunocompromised patients is largely due to improved medical expertise and technology. The heightened awareness of infectious diseases due to FGNB species mandates comprehensive classification and identification systems as a basis for rapid and reliable diagnostics. The most useful approaches are combinations of nucleic acid techniques such as hybridization, genetic transformation, amplification and base sequence analysis with selected conventional criteria. Among these approaches, the widely distributed feature of natural competence in these organisms facilitates the use of the biological method of genetic transformation as a valuable addition to the more common nucleic acid techniques. We describe the development of the taxonomy of FGNB through the last four decades, with particular emphasis on the families Neisseriaceae, Moraxellaceae , and Pasteurellaceae.