Which species concept for pathogenic bacteria? An E-Debate

摘要

First question: There is no unified evolutionary concept of species in bacteria. However, don't you think that the present state of art is OK for routine medical practice? If you disagree, please show why the present state of art could be misleading even for strict medical/veterinary purposes. It has long been recognised that the study of infectious diseases could not proceed without clear circumscription of the microbe. Thus, microbiology has been developed largely using tests that will delineate adisease-associated entity from one that is not, viz. biochemical tests, serology, phage typing, etc. The arrival of genomics (based largely upon 16S rDNA sequence comparisons has meant that no taxon (family, genus, species, etc.) has been left untouchedand the new edition of Bergeys Manual (in press) has already adopted the system. Genomics is therefore changing this long familiar system and, some aspects of microbiology which is focused at the clinical edge, is finding these changes difficult to reconcile. For example, the Gram stain (see e.g., Shah et al., 1997) has held a pivotal role in diagnostic microbiology but has little value in a modern phylogeneti-cally based classification. The systematist and the diagnostic microbiologist find themselvesat loggerheads with each other in many areas and, for pragmatic reasons, this debate is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. However, these