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The Family Azotobacteraceae

  • SECTION 3.3 Gamma Subclass
  • Reference work entry
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The Prokaryotes

The family Azotobacteraceae is represented by two genera, Azotobacter (Beijerinck, 1901a, 1901b) and Azomonas (Winogradsky, 1938). The removal of the genera Beijerinckia and Derxia from the Azotobacteraceae was based on rRNA cistron analysis (De Smedt et al., 1980) and rRNA cistron similarities as observed in DNA-rRNA hybridization experiments (De Vos et al., 1985). Such experiments showed that Beijerinckia and Derxia are not closely related to the genera Azotobacter and Azomonas, but that they belong to other subdivisions or groups, i.e., the alpha and the beta subclasses, respectively of the Proteobacteria (see The Proteobacteria: Ribosomal RNA Cistron Similarities and Bacterial Taxonomy in the second edition). On the other hand, investigations on rrna similarities of various gram-negative bacteria based on tm(e) values of dna-rrna hybrids showed that Azotobacter and Azomonas are closely related to one another and to the Pseudomonas fluorescensrRNA branch. The latter branch or...

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This chapter was taken unchanged from the second edition.

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Becking, J.H. (2006). The Family Azotobacteraceae. In: Dworkin, M., Falkow, S., Rosenberg, E., Schleifer, KH., Stackebrandt, E. (eds) The Prokaryotes. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30746-X_26

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