ABSTRACT
Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 217 Klebsiella and Enterobacter .......................................................................................................... 218
Klebsiella ............................................................................................................................ 218 Enterobacter ........................................................................................................................ 219
Proteus, Morganella, and Providencia .........................................................................................220 Salmonella .....................................................................................................................................220 Shigella and Escherichia coli ........................................................................................................ 222 Yersinia ..........................................................................................................................................224 Additional Members of the Family Enterobacteriaceae ................................................................226 References ...................................................................................................................................... 227
There is no single family in the γ class of the phylum Proteobacteria that has had a greater impact on medicine, public health, molecular genetics and phylogeny, pathogenesis, gene structure, regulation, and function, or microbial ecology and physiology than the Enterobacteriaceae. The current edition of Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology lists 42 genera and over 140 validly published species in this family.1 Current genera may contain as few as one (e.g., Hafnia, Plesiomonas) to as many as 12 distinct species (e.g., Enterobacter). The metamorphosis of the family over the past few decades and the explosion in the number of recognized taxa is a testimony to the early pioneering studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Pasteur Institute (French: Institut Pasteur) using DNA-DNA relatedness parameters and to more recent phylogenetic investigations employing 16S rRNA sequencing.
