Basic Bacteriology and Culture

Excerpt

When a new slow-growing Campylobacter-like organism (CLO) was cultured by Marshall in 1982, it was classified as Campylobacter pyloridis and shortly after corrected to C. pylori (91, 93). New intestinal CLOs were discovered at the same time, and C. pylori was sometimes referred to as gastric CLO (GCLO) and GCLO-1 when another CLO (GCLO-2, C. jejuni subsp. doylei) was isolated from the human stomach (78, 152). It soon became clear that even though C. pylori resembles Campylobacter in many aspects, it differs in important features such as flagellum morphology, fatty acid content, and 16S rRNA sequence (53, 54, 92, 127). C. pylori was transferred to a new genus, Helicobacter, and named Helicobacter pylori in 1989, together with Campylobacter fennelliae and Campylobacter cinaedae (52).

During the last decade, the genus Helicobacter has expanded tremendously and new species are regularly included. The majority of these new Helicobacter species are found in the stomachs and intestines of different animals (7, 21, 35, 40, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 58, 71, 89, 91, 93, 96, 144).