The genus name Rhodococcus Zopf 1891 was created to accommodate two species of red pigment (lipochrome)-producing bacteria. However, the genus name Rhodococcus Hansgirg 1884 had already been applied to an algal taxon. The wording of the 1975 and subsequent revisions of the Code dealing with bacteria/prokaryotes is such that the name Rhodococcus Zopf 1891 is illegitimate, despite the fact that i...

Background: Gram-positive bacteria of the genus Rhodococcus have shown an extraordinary capacity for metabolizing recalcitrant organic compounds. One hindrance to the full exploitation of Rhodococcus is the dearth of genetic tools available for strain manipulation. To address this issue, we sought to develop a plasmid-based system for genetic manipulation of a variety of Rhodococcus strains. Re...

A Gram-positive, aerobic, non-motile, mesophilic strain, djl-6(T), able to degrade carbendazim, was isolated from a carbendazim-contaminated soil sample from Jiangsu province, China. The taxonomic position of this isolate was analysed by using a polyphasic approach. Chemotaxonomic analysis including peptidoglycan type, diagnostic sugar composition, fatty acid profile, menaquinones, polar lipids...

Rhodococcus equi is a facultative intracellular pathogen of macrophages and the causative agent of foal pneumonia. R. equi virulence is usually assessed by analyzing intracellular growth in macrophages by enumeration of bacteria following cell lysis, which is time consuming and does not allow for a high throughput analysis. This paper describes the use of an impedance based real-time method to ...

Organically bound sulfur makes up about 90% of the total sulfur in soils, with sulfonates often the dominant fraction. Actinobacteria affiliated to the genus Rhodococcus were able to desulfonate arylsulfonates in wheat rhizospheres from the Broadbalk long-term field wheat experiment, which includes plots treated with inorganic fertilizer with and without sulfate, with farmyard manure, and unfer...

Rhodococcus equi is a Gram-positive coccobacillus that can cause a variety of infections in humans, most commonly severe pneumonia.1-4 These infections typically occur in immunocompromised hosts, although, rarely, immunocompetent hosts may be affected as well.1-4 Nonequi Rhodococcus species have been implicated in human disease, albeit less commonly than R equi. We report a case of severe cavit...

Background: Gram-positive bacteria of the genus Rhodococcus have shown an extraordinary capacity for metabolizing recalcitrant organic compounds. One hindrance to the full exploitation of Rhodococcus is the dearth of genetic tools available for strain manipulation. To address this issue, we sought to develop a plasmid-based system for genetic manipulation of a variety of Rhodococcus strains. Re...

Rhodococcus FMF is a gram-positive bacterium isolated for the first time from soil samples of Tabriz refinery in Iran. This microorganism is able to catabolize dibenzothiophene to 2-hydroxybiphenyl and inorganic sulfur without the destruction of carbon-carbon bonds. Three structural genes, dszA, dszB, and dszC have been characterized and shown to be responsible for this phenotype. In this work,...

The genus Rhodococcus has proved to be a promising option for the cleanup of polluted sites and application of a microbial biocatalyst. Rhodococcus sp. strain R04, isolated from oil-contaminated soil, can biodegrade polychlorinated biphenyls. Here we report the draft genome sequence of Rhodococcus sp. strain R04, which could be used to predict genes for xenobiotic biodegradation and provide imp...

It is now well established that material naturally moves around the Solar System, even from planetary surface to planetary surface. Accordingly, the idea that life is distributed throughout space and did not necessarily originate on the Earth but migrated here from elsewhere (Panspermia) is increasingly deemed worthy of consideration. If life arrived at the Earth from space, its relative speed ...