The Genus Erysipelothrix
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The Genus Erysipelothrix ERKO STACKEBRANDT, ANNETTE C. REBOLI AND W. EDMUND FARRAR
The genus Erysipelothrix consists of three species, Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae (Rosenbach, 1909), Erysipelothrix tonsillarum (Takahashi et al., 1987a) and the recently described Erysipelothrix inopinata (Verbarg et al., 2004). In 1876, Koch first isolated this slender, pleomorphic, Gram-positive bacillus from the blood of mice that had been inoculated subcutaneously with blood from putrefied meat (Koch, 1878) and was designated “E. muriseptica.” In 1882, Loeffler observed a similar organism in the cutaneous blood vessels of a pig that had died of swine erysipelas and published the first good description of the organism (Loeffler, 1886). It is probable that a bacillus observed a few months previously by Pasteur and Dumas in pigs dying of rouget (swine erysipelas) was the same organism as that described by Loeffler (Pasteur and Dumas, 1882). Trevisan (1885) proposed the name “E. insidiosa.” Rosenbach was the first to establish Erysipelothrix as a human pathogen. In 1909, he reported the isolation of the organism from a patient with localized cutaneous lesions and coined the term “erysipeloid” to distinguish these lesions from those of human erysipelas (Rosenbach, 1909). Subsequently, Erysipelothrix was identified as the cause of infection in many animal species. Rosenbach distinguished three species, E. muriseptica, E. porci and E. erysipeloides, based on their murine, porcine, and human origins, respectively (Rosenbach, 1909). The name Bacterium rhusiopathiae (Migula, 1900) antedated the name E. porci. The combination Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae was first proposed by Buchanan (1918). At least 36 names have appeared in the literature for species of this genus. With the appreciation that all strains belonged to a single species, the name E. insidiosa was proposed for E. rhusiopathiae, E. muriseptica, and E. erysipeloides (Langford and Hansen, 1953; Langford and Hansen, 1954). In 1966, Shuman and Wellmann proposed that the name E. insidiosa be rejected in favor of E. rhusiopathiae which means literally “erysipelas thread of red disease.” With more strains being subjected to taxonomic studies, the great variation in serological, biochemical, chemical and genomic properties of
E. rhusiopathiae was noted (Erler, 1972; Feist, 1972; Flossmann and Erler, 1972; White and Miritikani, 1976; Takahashi et al., 1992) and consequently the species E. tonsillarum (also named “E. tonsillae” in the older literature [Takahashi et al., 1989] was described for avirulent Erysipelothrix strains of serotype 7, frequently isolated from the tonsils of apparently healthy pigs (Takahashi et al., 1987a). The species E. inopinata was isolated from sterile-filtered vegetable broth (Verbarg et al., 2004). Erysipelothrix, the only genus of the family Erysipelothrichaceae (Verbarg et al., 2004), is defined as Gram-positive but may appear Gramnegative because it decolorizes readily. Strains are nonencapsulated, nonsporulating, non
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