MYCO

A paper recently published on Frontiers in Microbiology, readily endorsed by Int.J.Syst.Evol.Microbiol., the world authority for microbial taxonomy, redraws in deep the classification of mycobacteria. The analysis of 150 genomes of the same number of mycobacterial species, present in GenBank, allowed to Gupta R.S. et al. to detect a number of molecular markers consisting, either in insertions/deletions of amino acids, or in proteins exclusively found in evolutionarily related groups of species. Basing on markers above the previous genus Mycobacterium is split in 5 genera. The novel genus Mycobacterium includes the slowly growing species except for M. terrae complex. The M. terrae complex becomes the new genus Mycolicibacter. The rapidly growing species belonging to the M. abscessus-chelonae complex constitute the new genus Mycobacteroides while the remaining rapid growers are part of the new genus Mycolicibacterium. A fifth genus, Mycolicibacillus, includes at present two species only.