Summary

An extensive literature review concerning the taxonomic status of the species of genus Streptomyces has been made. The classical microbiological and chemo taxonomical methods which form the bais of the present classification of the species of this genus, as well as, the modern molecular biological aproaches- analysis of protein patterns, multilocus enzyme electrophoretical (MLEE) analysis, restriction analysis, analysis of the nucleotide sequences of 16S and 23S RNA, RNA/DNA se-quencing, DNA fingerprinting with different probes or polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primers were described. The profound analysis showed the advantages of the molecular biological methods for streptomyces taxonomy and indicated that none of these methods applied independently could solve the existing problems in the taxonomy of genus Streptomyces. A wider application of the molecular genetic aproaches is necessary in order to specifiy the taxonomic status of the species in-cluded in categoriy III and IV according to Bergey and to find a criterion for distin-guishing between the closely related species, as well as, to e evaluate the ho-mogenity of some streptomyces species