Clostridea
From Palaeos
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[edit] Characteristics
Mostly with thick rigid murein walls containing teichoic acids and lipoteichoic acids; often forming endospores. In contrast, one subclade, the Mollicutes, has lost the cell wall, and is mostly intracellular parasites or symbionts (Mycoplasma).
[edit] Nomenclature
The clade that I am here referring to as 'Clostridea' is probably more often seen under the name 'Firmicutes', and appears as such in the latest edition of Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology, probably the reference most often regarded as the one-stop shop for bacterial classification. However, the class 'Firmicutes', when first coined in Bergey's Manual, was originally intended to include all Gram-positive bacteria, including Actinobacteria, and its restriction to one subset of that group strikes me as unfortunate. In contrast, the name 'Clostridea' that was used by Cavalier-Smith (1998) to refer to this taxon has not appeared in any other sense, and has the advantage of clearly referring to Clostridium, one of the main genera within this clade. Admittedly, Cavalier-Smith excluded Mollicutes from Clostridea (Cavalier-Smith has no objections to the use of paraphyletic taxa in his classifications), but as the Mollicutes are probably embedded deep within this clade, and represent a relatively small part of it, I see no problem with expanding the name to cover them.
Perhaps more than any other group of bacteria, the taxonomy of Clostridea is currently unstable (and that's saying something!). In the past, members of Clostridea have generally been placed in a few large genera (such as Bacillus and Clostridium), based on morphological/physiological grounds, that now appear to be highly polyphyletic. While new genera have been proposed to subdivide the old for a number of cases, researchers outside the bacterial taxonomy 'clique' have been slow to take them up. Many Clostridea are of significant ecomonomic importance, for instance medically (Clostridium tetani, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae), in food production (Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus) or in biocontrol (Bacillus thuringiensis), and a significant amount of literature is already about under the old names for these taxa. Clostridea is therefore perhaps a perfect case study for the conflict that often exists between the creation of a rational, phylogeny-based classification and the researchers who have to actually try to use the resulting classification.
[edit] Phylogeny
<==Clostridea [Firmicutes, Teichobacteria] | i. s.: Desulfosporosinus orientis | Thermoacetogenium | Desulfitobacterium dehalogenans | Fusibacter paucivorans | Acidaminobacter hydrogenoformans | Macrococcus | |--M. caseolyticus | `--+--M. equipercicus | `--+--M. bovicus | `--M. carouselicus | Exiguobacterium aurantiacum | Caryophanon latum | Saccharococcus thermophilus | Paenibacillus | Peptostreptococcus anaerobius | Syntrophomonas wolfei | Thermoanaerobacter | |--T. ethanolicus | `--T. tengcongensis | Moorella thermacetica [=Clostridium thermaceticum] |--Roseburia cecicola |--Oxobacter pfennigii |--Caloramator fervidus |--Clostridium `--+--+--Sporosarcina ureae | `--Planococcus |--+--+--‘Clostridium’ ramosum | | `--Asteroleplasma anaerobium | `--+--Mollicutes | `--+--Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae | `--+--‘Eubacterium’ biforme | `--‘Clostridium’ innocuum `--+--Gemella haemolysans |--+--Alicyclobacillaceae | `--Thermoactinomyces | | i. s.: T. dichotomicus | | T. peptonophilus | | T. sacchari | |--T. vulgaris | `--+--T. candidus | `--‘Bacillus’ validus `--+--+--Bacillus | `--Staphylococcus `--+--Kurthia zopfii `--+--Listeria | |--L. innocua | `--L. monocytogenes `--+--+--Enterococcus | | |--E. faecalis | | |--E. faecium | | `--E. hirae | `--+--Streptococcus | `--Lactococcus lactis [=Streptococcus lactis] | |--L. l. ssp. lactis | |--L. l. ssp. cremoris | `--L. l. ssp. diacetilactis `--+--+--Carnobacterium piscicola | `--Vagococcus salmoninarum `--+--Lactobacillus |--Pediococcus | |--P. cerevisiae | `--P. pentosetaceus `--Leuconostoc | i. s.: L. cremoris |--+--L. mesenteroides | `--L. oenos `--+--L. paramesenteroides `--‘Lactobacillus’ viridescens
* Type species of generic name indicated
[edit] References
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