Defining bacterial species in the genomic era: insights from the genus Acinetobacter.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Microbial taxonomy remains a conservative discipline, relying on phenotypic information derived from growth in pure culture and techniques that are time-consuming and difficult to standardize, particularly when compared to the ease of modern high-throughput genome sequencing. Here, drawing on the genus Acinetobacter as a test case, we examine whether bacterial taxonomy could abandon phenotypic approaches and DNA-DNA hybridization and, instead, rely exclusively on analyses of genome sequence data.

Results

In pursuit of this goal, we generated a set of thirteen new draft genome sequences, representing ten species, combined them with other publically available genome sequences and analyzed these 38 strains belonging to the genus. We found that analyses based on 16S r

SUBMITTER: Chan JZ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3556118 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature