The science behind naming microorganisms

1. Taxonomy and classification
of microorganisms

2. Taxonomy
• Taxonomic order
• Domain
• kingdom
• phylum
• class
• order
• family
• genus
• species

3. How to write names of microorganisms
• The Genus is written with a capital letter and species with a small letter.
• Both are italicized/underlined.
• Genus may be shortened for example, Staphylococcus aureus to S. aureus
• Latinized names

4. Naming microorganisms
Genera Named after Individuals
Escherichia coli Theodore Escherich
Neisseria gonorrhoeae Albert Neisser
Genera Named after an Attribute of the Microbe
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Saccharo (“sugar”)
Myces (“fungus”)
Cerevisiae (“beer”)

5. Myxococcus xanthus
Myxo (slime)
Coccus (round)
Xanthus (yellow)
Staphylococcus aureus
Staphylo (grape-like cluster)
Coccus (round)
Aureus (gold)

6. Genera Named for a Microbe’s Shape
Vibrio cholerae
Vibrio (comma-
shaped)
Cholera
Staphylococcus
epidermidis
Epidermidis

7. CLASSIFICATION OF ORGANISMS
Classification was first proposed by Carolus Linnaeus in the 18th century. He simply
put them into either vegetalia kingdom or animalia kingdom.

8. 3 domains (accredited to Charles Woese
and colleagues).

9. What do microbiologists
study?

11. Reference
• See chapter (10) on classification of microorganisms in Microbiology
an Introduction by Tortora, Funke and Case.