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The Genus Brevibacterium

  • Firmicutes with High GC Content of DNA
  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
The Prokaryotes

Introduction

The genus Brevibacterium was established by Breed (1953), with B. linens as the type species, for a number of Gram-positive, short, unbranching, rod-shaped bacteria formerly classified in the genus Bacterium. Owing to the poor delimitation of the genus, it soon became a repository for a broad range of organisms with very diverse chemical, biochemical and physiological features. Taxonomic studies, in particular those based on cellular chemical analyses, demonstrated the extreme heterogeneity of the genus and resulted in the reclassification of many Brevibacterium species in other coryneform genera (including Arthrobacter, Aureobacterium, Corynebacterium, Curtobacterium, Exiguobacterium, Microbacterium, Nocardioides, Oerskovia and Rhodococcus; see Jones and Keddie, 1985). The description of the genus was subsequently tightened and restricted to the species Brevibacterium linens and B. iodinum (formerly Chromobacterium iodinum; Collins et al., 1980). In addition to B. linens...

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Authors
  1. Matthew D. Collins
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, University of Minnesota, Box 196, Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0312, USA

    Martin Dworkin Professor Dr. (Editor-in-Chief) (Editor-in-Chief)

  2. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University Medical School, 299 Campus Drive, Fairchild, D039, Stanford, CA, 94305-5124, USA

    Stanley Falkow

  3. Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Eugene Rosenberg

  4. Department of Microbiology, Technical University Munich, 80290, Munich, Germany

    Karl-Heinz Schleifer

  5. DSMZ- German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures GmbH, Mascheroder Weg 1b, 38124, Braunschweig, Germany

    Erko Stackebrandt

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Collins, M.D. (2006). The Genus Brevibacterium. In: Dworkin, M., Falkow, S., Rosenberg, E., Schleifer, KH., Stackebrandt, E. (eds) The Prokaryotes. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30743-5_42

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