Recent advances on chlamydial taxonomy and identification / 中国人兽共患病学报

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACTChlamydiae are obligate intracellular bacteria with a unique biphasic developmental cycle ,and have close rela‐tionships with human .Emerging Chlamydia species such as Chlamydia ibidis ,Chlamydia avium and Chlamydia gallinacea changed the chlamydial taxonomy .The biggest change is the abandon of genus Chlamydophilaand its previous six species were recombined into genus Chlamydia ,which in together with the emerging species ,expands genus Chlamydia to 12 species .This paper briefly reviewed the latest taxonomy of Chlamydiae and their identification methods ,which include the classical biological characteristics and physico‐chemical properties ,modern molecular genetics ,and the newly developed whole genome analysis . Presently ,molecular genetics methods ,including sequence analysis of 16S rRNA ,ompA and other Chlamydia‐specific genes , are commonly used for chlamydial identification .