Typical shapes and arrangements of bacterial cells

Typical arrangements of bacterial flagella

Comparison of the thick
cell wall of Gram-
positive bacteria with
the
comparatively thin cell
wall of Gram-negative
bacteria. Note the
complexity of the Gram-
negative cell envelope
(outer membrane, its
hydrophobic lipoprotein
anchor; periplasmic
space).
General sequence of steps in the Gram stain procedure and the resultant staining of Gram-
positive and Gram-negative bacteria.
Diagrammatic representation of peptidoglycan structures with adjacent
glycan strands cross-linked directly from the carboxyterminal D-alanine to
the e-amino group of an adjacent tetrapeptide or through a peptide cross
bridge ,N-acetylmuramic acid; N-acetylglucosamine.
Structures of cell wall teichoic acids. (A) Ribitol teichoic acid with repeating units of 1,5-
phosphodiester linkages of D-ribitol and D-alanyl ester on position 2 and glycosyl substituents (R)
on position 4. The glycosyl groups may abe Nacetylglucosaminyl (a or b) as in S aureus or a-
glucosyl as in B subtilis W23. (B) Glycerol teichoic acid with 1,3-phosphodiester linkages of
glycerol repeating units (1,2-linkages in some species). In the glycerol teichoic acid structure
shown, the polymer may be unsubstituted (R - H) or substituted (R - D-alanyl or glycosyl).
The three major, covalently linked regions that form the
typical LPS.
Example of dendrogram
BACTERIAL CLASSIFICATION:
PHYLOGENETIC APPROACH
The ideal means of identifying and classifying bacteria would be to compare each
gene sequence in a given strain with the gene sequences for every known species.
This cannot be done, but the total DNA of one organism can be compared with that
of any other organism by a method called nucleic acid hybridization or DNA
hybridization.
This method can be used to measure the number of DNA sequences that any two
organisms have in common and to estimate the percentage of divergence within
DNA sequences that are related but not identical.
DNA relatedness studies have been done for yeasts, viruses, bacteriophages, and
many groups of bacteria.
PHYLOGENETIC APPROACH
Five factors can be used to determine DNA relatedness:
genome size, guanine-pluscytosine (G+C) content, DNA relatedness under conditions
optimal for DNA reassociation, thermal stability of related DNA sequences, and DNA
relatedness under conditions supraoptimal for DNA reassociation.
Because it is not practical to conduct these genotypic or phylogenetic evaluations in
clinical laboratories, the results of simpler tests usually must be correlated with
known phylogenetic data.
For example, yellow strains of Enterobacter cloacae were shown, by DNA
relatedness, to form a separate species, Enterobacter sakazakii, but were not
designated as such until results of practical tests were correlated with the DNA data
to allow routine laboratories to identify the new species.
Bacterial identification