The Genera Staphylococcus and Macrococcus
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The Genera Staphylococcus and Macrococcus FRIEDRICH GÖTZ, TAMMY BANNERMAN AND KARL-HEINZ SCHLEIFER
Introduction The name Staphylococcus (staphyle, bunch of grapes) was introduced by Ogston (1883) for the group micrococci causing inflammation and suppuration. He was the first to differentiate two kinds of pyogenic cocci: one arranged in groups or masses was called “Staphylococcus” and another arranged in chains was named “Billroth’s Streptococcus.” A formal description of the genus Staphylococcus was provided by Rosenbach (1884). He divided the genus into the two species Staphylococcus aureus and S. albus. Zopf (1885) placed the mass-forming staphylococci and tetrad-forming micrococci in the genus Micrococcus. In 1886, the genus Staphylococcus was separated from Micrococcus by Flügge (1886). He differentiated the two genera mainly on the basis of their action on gelatin and on relation to their hosts. Staphylococci liquefied gelatin and were parasitic or pathogenic or both whereas micrococci were variable in their action on gelatin and were saprophytic. The genera Staphylococcus, Micrococcus and Planococcus, containing Gram-positive, catalase-positive cocci, were later placed in the family Micrococcaceae. Evans et al. (1955) proposed separating staphylococci from micrococci on the basis of their relation to oxygen. The facultative anaerobic cocci were placed in the genus Staphylococcus and the obligate aerobic cocci in the genus Micrococcus. By the mid-1960s, a clear distinction could be made between staphylococci and micrococci on the basis of their DNA base composition (Silvestri and Hill, 1965). Members of the genus Staphylococcus have a DNA G+C content of 33–40 mol%, whereas members of the genus Micrococcus have a high G+C content of around 70 mol%. Further studies have shown that staphylococci can be distinguished from micrococci and other catalase-positive cocci on the basis of their cell wall composition (Schleifer and Kandler, 1972; Endl et al., 1983), cytochrome profile (Faller et al., 1980) and menaquinone pattern (Collins and Jones, 1981), susceptibility to lysostaphin and erythromycin (Schleifer and Kloos, 1975b), bacitracin (Falk and Guering, 1983), and fura-
zolidone (Baker, 1984). Comparative immunochemical studies of catalases (Schleifer, 1986), DNA-DNA hybridization studies, DNA-rRNA hybridization studies (Schleifer et al., 1979; Kilpper et al., 1980), and comparative oligonucleotide cataloguing of 16S rRNA (Ludwig et al., 1981) clearly demonstrated the epigenetic and genetic difference of staphylococci and micrococci. Members of the genus Staphylococcus form a coherent and well-defined group of related species that is widely divergent from those of the genus Micrococcus. Until the early 1970s, the genus Staphylococcus consisted of three species: the coagulase-positive species S. aureus and the coagulase-negative species S. epidermidis and S. saprophyticus, but a deeper look into the chemotaxonomic and genotypic properties of staphylococci
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