Revised taxonomy of mollicutes (mycoplasmas)

Taxonomy of the new order Mycoplamoidales of the class Mollicutes. New taxa are written in red. For a complete figure, see Taxonomy of mollicutes (mycoplasmas) in VetBact.

The taxonomy of the mollicutes (mycoplasmas) has finally been revised thanks to a Canadian and an Israeli research group. This revised taxonomy is based on data from whole genome sequencing of 140 mollicutes. Only members of the so-called mycoides group are still included in the order Mycoplasmatales. Other former members of this order have now been transferred to the order Mycoplasmoidales. This new order Mycoplasmoidales has been divided into the two families Mycoplasmoidaceae and Metamycoplasmataceae, which have been further subdivided into five different genera (see figure). The important purpose of the revision of the taxonomy of the mollicutes was to get a taxonomy that reflects the actual phylogeny of these bacteria. Read more about this new taxonomy in the term list of VetBact under Taxonomy of mollicutes (mycoplasmas).

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1 Response to Revised taxonomy of mollicutes (mycoplasmas)

  1. About 2 years ago, the taxonomy of mycoplasmas was revised at VetBact, because a research group had proposed that 5 new genera should be included together with the genus Mycoplasma. This also had consequences for higher taxa within the phylum, which was then called Tenericutes. Now another group of researchers has suggested that these new names should be rejected.
    Reference: Balish M, Bertaccini A, Blanchard A et al. 2019. Recommended rejection of the names Malacoplasma gen. nov., Mesomycoplasma gen. nov., Metamycoplasma gen. nov., Metamycoplasmataceae fam. nov., Mycoplasmoidaceae fam. nov., Mycoplasmoidales ord. nov., Mycoplasmoides gen. nov., Mycoplasmopsis gen. nov. [Gupta, Sawnani, Adeolu, Alnajar and Oren 2018] and all proposed species comb. nov. placed therein. Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol. 69(11), 3650-3653.

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