User talk:Plansona

Higher Order Taxa

Bacteria; Proteobacteria; Gammaproteobacteria; Pseudomonadales; Moraxellaceae; Moraxella

Species

Moraxella bovis, Moraxella ovis, Moraxella bovoculi, Moraxella catarrhalis

Description and Significance

Moraxella boivs is a highly opportunistic bacterium infecting cattle herds worldwide, causing Infectious Bovine Keratoconjunctivits (IBK), also known as pinkeye or ‘New Forest Eye’. This disease is characterized by inflammation and ulceration of the conjunctiva causing discomfort, excessive tearing (3) and can eventually cause ocular rupturing. This bacterium thrives on the surface of cattle eyes proliferating exponentially in the presence of oxygen and ultraviolet rays from the summer sun, which predisposes the eye to infection (3,6). IBK is transferred from cattle to cattle with flies acting as virulent vectors (4). Increased rates of infection occur during the summer and fall season as there is a correlation with increased sunlight and fly populations.

Genome and Structure

Contiguous DNA size is 15826 bp, contigs N50 (3). M. bovis has circular DNA. The DNA genome sequence of the bacterial strain Moraxella bovis Epp63 has been or is still being determined with 361 contigs read using Sanger method analysis (2).

Cell and Colony Structure

Moraxella bovis is a gram-negative coccobacillus, non-motile, free-living bacteria measuring between 0.6 – 1.0 µm in diameter (2,4,6), lacking flagella with varying amounts of pili. M. bovis is able to use colonial morphology (5) as a way to adapt to environmental changes. Colonies can switch between spreading-corroding (SC) and non-corroding (N) morphologies. The more virulent and common colony type is that of the SC form, which grows in flat cylindrical disk a few bacteria thick (5).

Metabolism

Being an aerobic pathogen, M. bovis uses environmentally available glucose as fuel, as well as importing essential enzymes, and uses oxygen as its electron acceptor at the end of the electron transport chain (2,6).