Phylogenetic Trees
Phylogenetic trees allow us a visual of the
taxonomy and overall placement of an organism in regards to its
closest relatives and other groups that are much farther away.
A fairly broad phylogenetic tree is shown first, where Streptomyces
griseus would be found under the gram positive section
of the bacteria:
Broad phylogenetic trees
like this one above offers perspective as to what other groups of bacteria
are closely related to the gram positive bacteria. From this it can be
gathered that the cyanobacteria and the proteobacteria are the closest
groups of bacteria to the gram positives.
Looking at a more
detailed tree can give a more in depth view into the species that are most
closely related to our bacteria. The phylogenetic tree below conveys this
idea:
This phylogenetic tree has
been simplified for clarity, as there are many species of streptomycin;
which is visible even by this highly reduced tree. How this data was
achieved was through looking at the "16S rRNA gene by a method of multilocus
sequence analysis," (Yinping, 2008). By looking at this tree it can be inferred that the
closest relative to Streptomyces griseusare other streptomyces
species.
From looking at both
of these trees and understanding the vast levels of clarification of species
from one another we can begin to appreciate the amount differentiation
between the broad categories of organisms all the way to very minor changes
found between organisms at the species level.
Now, we'll dive into the ground and take a look at where
and how this bacteria lives.