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Concept
Mycoplasma
Summary
Mycoplasma is a genus of bacteria that, like the other members of the class Mollicutes, lack a cell wall around their cell membranes. Peptidoglycan (murein) is absent. This characteristic makes them naturally resistant to antibiotics that target cell wall synthesis (like the beta-lactam antibiotics). They can be parasitic or saprotrophic. Several species are pathogenic in humans, including M. pneumoniae, which is an important cause of "walking" pneumonia and other respiratory disorders, and M. genitalium, which is believed to be involved in pelvic inflammatory diseases. Mycoplasma species (like the other species of the class Mollicutes) are among the smallest organisms yet discovered, can survive without oxygen, and come in various shapes. For example, M. genitalium is flask-shaped (about 300 x 600 nm), while M. pneumoniae is more elongated (about 100 x 1000 nm), many Mycoplasma species are coccoid. Hundreds of Mycoplasma species infect animals.
The trivial name “mycoplasma” (plural mycoplasmas or mycoplasms) is commonly used for all members of the class Mollicutes. In scientific classification, the designation Mycoplasma refers exclusively to the genus, a member of the Mycoplasmataceae, the only family of the order Mycoplasmatales (see “scientific classification”).
The term "mycoplasma", from the Greek μύκης, mykes (fungus) and πλάσμα, plasma (formed), was first used by Albert Bernhard Frank in 1889 to describe an altered state of plant cell cytoplasm resulting from infiltration by fungus-like microorganisms. Julian Nowak later proposed the name mycoplasma for certain filamentous microorganisms imagined to have both cellular and acellular stages in their lifecycles, which could explain how they were visible with a microscope, but passed through filters impermeable to other bacteria. Later, the name for these mycoplasmas was pleuropneumonia-like organisms (PPLO), broadly referring to organisms similar in colonial morphology and filterability to the causative agent (a Mycoplasma species) of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia.
Official source
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