The Diversity of the Genus Acinetobacter
Lenie Dijkshoorn and Alexandr Nemec
from: Acinetobacter Molecular Biology (Edited by: Ulrike Gerischer). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2008)
Abstract
The genus Acinetobacter comprises 17 validly named and 14 unnamed (genomic) species. Some unrelated (genomic) species have common designations, while some other species seem to be congruent but have different names. The knowledge of the biology or ecology of acinetobacters at species level is limited. This is due to the fact that identification of acinetobacters at species level is difficult. A phenotypic species identification system comprising c. 20 tests has been described (Bouvet and Grimont, 1986) but is not widely used and some closely related species cannot be separated well with this system. A variety of genotypic methods has been explored and applied to investigate the diversity or phylogeny in the genus. These methods include high resolution fingerprinting with AFLP, PCR-RFLP with digestion of PCR amplified sequences, and analysis of various DNA sequences. Of these, AFLP analysis and amplified 16SrDNA ribosomal DNA restriction analysis have been validated with large numbers of strains of all described species. Nucleotide sequence based methods are expected to be the standard for identification in the near future, but a prerequisite for their successful application is the availability of libraries of sequences of strains of all described genomic species. For each species, the sequences should cover the intra-species diversity. Sequence comparisons will also provide a valuable tool to study the phylogenetic relatedness of species read more ...
