ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with metabolic properties, methods for cultivation, identification and typing of acinetobacters in clinical microbiology. A selective medium for acinetobacters, comprising sugars, bile salts and bromocresol purple, available commercially as Herellea Agar (Difco), has been described by Mandel et al. Bouvet and Grimont described a scheme of 28 phenotypic tests for identification of acinetobacters to the genomic species delineated in the same report. The identification matrix presented in this study included 255 strains, of which 74 had been allocated to genomic species by DNA-DNA hybridisation. Bernards et al. recently explored Biolog's potential for classification and identification with 129 strains of genomic species 1-7,8/9,1012 and 13-14TU, all identified by DNA-DNA hybridisation. Fatty acid composition was also investigated for 211 strains of Acinetobacter of all known genomic species as identified by DNA-DNA hybridization.
