Higher order taxa:

    Domain: Bacteria

    Phylum: Actinobacteria

    Order: Actinomycetales

    Family:Streptomycetaceae

    Genus: Streptomyces

Streptomyces griseus is an aerobic bacterium, meaning it requires oxygen in order to live.

Gram stain: Gram-positive (All bacteria in this genus are Gram-positive)

Structure:

    Streptomyces griseus is a spore forming, rod-shaped bacterium

         (copied from Wikipedia)

    S. griseus, as well as the rest of the Streptomyces genus, forms a long string-like net called a mycelium that has chains of spores, when upon maturity.

    All bacteria in the Streptomyces genus lack flagella...

Habitat:   Streptomyces griseus's main habitat is in soil.  It naturally helps decompose organic matter and can be found around the world in different types of earth.

History:

    Streptomyces griseus was first discoverd in 1915 by a Dr. Selman Waksman, an american biochemist and his assistant.  They named this new isolated bacterium Actinomyces griseus, but it was later changed to its current and world renowned name, Streptomyces griseus. Dr. Waksman also showed that of all microbes, S. griseus was able to survive best when the living conditions in the soil became less than optimum.

This is a picture of Dr. Selman Waksman:

Nutritional Requirements: S. griseus is an heterotrophic bacterium, meaning it obtains energy from the breakdown of organic materials.  This is obvious because S. griseus breaks down decaying matter in soil

Beneficial Properties: As already stated on the various tabs, Streptomyces griseus helps produce Streptomycin, an antibiotic that helps humans.  To learn more about Streptomycin and other antibiotics/antifungals that different bacteria in the Streptomyces genus help make visit the following link: Medicinal Uses. This bacterium also helps in the decomposition of organic materials, and therefore is vital in nature as well.

Reproduction: S. griseus reproduces asexually, via mitosis. Here is a video that explains mitosis:

Recent news:  Recently, biotechnology researchers have started to use Streptomycin to recombine different human proteins.  Orgininally, E. coli was used for this but S. griseus was discovered to not cause problems such as incorrect protein folding which E. coli has a tendancy to do.  This is a video on what protein folding looks like...

Created by Chuck