What’s in a Name? The Taxonomic Overview of the Genus Elizabethkingia

With the utilization of genomic sequencing, a wide variety and number of new and reclassified bacterial species has been generated. This naming of a new or renaming old bacterial species is a highly formal process and the rules of the Bacteriological Code are followed. As part of this process, a new species name must either be placed on a validation list in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM) or must be published as a full report in the IJSEM to become valid. The challenge for clinical microbiologists is to keep current on this changing nomenclature. This series on bacterial taxonomy was begun with the last newsletter with a goal to provide guidance for the clinical microbiologist to keep accurate in the reporting of a bacterial pathogen. The inaugural article in this series described species within the genus Citrobacter. This report describes a new genus composed of two new closely related species, Elizabethkingia meningoseptica (originally identified as Flavobacterium meningosepticum) and E. miricola. Historically, the genus Flavobacterium was created in 1923 for those gram-negative non-sporulating yellow-pigmented rods that weakly produced acid from carbohydrates. Since this original classification, several Flavobacterium species have been reclassified into new or othe