Isolation and Characterization of Micrococci From Human Skin, Including Two New Species: Micrococcus lylae and Micrococcus kristinae

Abstract

Micrococci were commonly isolated from the skins of people living in various regions of the United States. Not all micrococci isolated in this investigation could be identified with the currently recognized species of Micrococcus, viz., M. luteus, M. varians, or M. roseus, and these micrococci therefore became the subject of further taxonomic study. As a result of this study, two new species are proposed: Micrococcus lylae and M. kristinae. The type strains of these species are ATCC 27566 and ATCC 27570, respectively. Numerous strains were isolated that were similar t o M. sedentarius or M. nishinomiyaensis, species that were previously represented by only single strains. (ZoBell's strain 5 4 1 [ ATCC 14392; CCM 3141 is designated herein as the type strain of M. sedentarius.) A few micrococci were left unclassified. A variety of morphological, physiological, biochemical, and genetic characters were examined for their use as taxonomic criteria, and key characters, many of which can be determined by simple laboratory procedures, were selected for species differentiation. The more sophisticated studies of aliphatic hydrocarbons and cell-wall peptidoglycans were also very useful in the taxonomy of the micrococci. The predominant micrococci found on human skin were M. luteus and M. varians.The medical literature has, for many years, made reference to a group of aerobic, saprophytic bacteria known as Sarcina that have been commonly isolated from human skin ( 14, 18,28,29,33). Recent taxonomic studies have indicated that most aerobic strains maintained in various culture collections under the name of Sarcina belong t o the species Micrococcus luteus (Schroeter 1872) Cohn 1872 or Micrococcus varians Migula 1900 (19, 21, 22, 24, 40). In line with this, Marples et al. (30) recently made reference t o the species M. luteus in studies on the aerobic microflora of the human scalp. M. varians has not yet been reported in studies of human skin. However, it was not until 1973 (22) that a comprehensive report on the taxonomic status of this species was made available. Earlier reports were somewhat confusing, and, with the lack of a clearly defined species status, cutaneous isolates may have been simply placed in Baird-Parker's Micrococcus subgroups together with other species (2). The purpose of this investigation was t o classify species of micrococci found on human skin by using the most current taxonomic critieria. We also became involved with evaluating existing taxonomic criteria, exploring new characters, and estimating species variation in cutaneous populations.Some of the preliminary results of this study have been previously reported (W. E. Kloos and K. H. Schleifer, Abst. Annu. Meet. Amer. SOC. Microbiol., 73rd, Miami Beach, p-116, 1973). MATERIALS AND METHODSBacterial straips. Micrococci were isolated from the healthy skins o f two groups of people. One group was composed of 20 people living in Raleigh, N.C., who were sampled once each month for 6-13 months. Samples from people of the Raleigh longitudinal study w...

Micrococcus in the blood

“…M. luteus could be distinguished from the strains from patients by failing to hydrolyse arginine or gelatiq or to produce a CAMP-factor-like substance, while M. sedentarius differed from the patients' strains in giving negative results in tests for hydrolysis of arginine, gelatin and Tweens, for CAMP factor and oxidase. The reactions of the named strains were similar to those described (Kloos, Tornabene and Schleifer, 1974) except for the fermentative attack on glucose found for M. uuriuns. Table I11 lists the minimum inhibitory concentrations of antibiotics for the strains.…”

“…The study strains from patients could be distinguished from M. kristinue because the latter produces acid from glucose and by colonial appearance from M. nishinomiyaensis, which has small, bright orange, slow-growing colonies (Kloos et al 1974). They differed from M. luteus, M. uarians and M .…”

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“…At the time of writing, the genus Micrococcus comprised five species, Micrococcus luteus (Cohn, 1872), Micrococcus lylae (Kloos et al, 1974), Micrococcus antarcticus (Liu et al, 2000), Micrococcus flavus (Liu et al, 2007) and Micrococcus endophyticus (Chen et al, 2009). Members of the genus Micrococcus are aerobic, Gram-positive and catalasepositive.…”