To use all functions of this page, please activate cookies in your browser.
With an accout for my.bionity.com you can always see everything at a glance – and you can configure your own website and individual newsletter.
- My watch list
- My saved searches
- My saved topics
- My newsletter
Gram-positive bacteria are those that retain a crystal violet dye during the Gram stain process. Gram-positive bacteria appear blue or violet under a microscope, whereas Gram-negative bacteria appear red or pink. The Gram classification system is empirical, and largely based on differences in cell wall structure. The purpose of Gram staining is to visually differentiate groups of bacteria, primarily for identification.
Additional recommended knowledge
The following characteristics are generally present in a Gram-positive bacterium:
History of Gram-positive
In the original bacterial phyla, the Gram-positive forms made up the phylum Firmicutes, a name now used for the largest group. It includes many well-known genera such as Bacillus, Listeria, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Enterococcus, and Clostridium. It has also been expanded to include the Mollicutes, bacteria like Mycoplasma that lack cell walls and so cannot be stained by Gram, but are derived from such forms.
The actinobacteria are another major group of Gram-positive bacteria; they and the Firmicutes are referred to as the high and low G+C groups based on the guanosine and cytosine content of their DNA. If the second membrane is a derived condition, the two may have been basal among the bacteria; otherwise they are probably a relatively recent monophyletic group. They have been considered as possible ancestors for the archaeans and eukaryotes, both because they are unusual in lacking the second membrane and because of various biochemical similarities such as the presence of sterols.
The Deinococcus-Thermus bacteria also have Gram-positive stains, although they are structurally similar to Gram-negative bacteria.
Both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria may have a membrane called an S-layer. In Gram-negative bacteria, the S-layer is directly attached to the outer membrane. In Gram-positive bacteria, the S-layer is attached to the peptidoglycan layer. Unique to Gram-positive bacteria is the presence of teichoic acids in the cell wall. Some particular teichoic acids, lipoteichoic acids, have a lipid component and can assist in anchoring peptidoglycan, as the lipid component is embedded in the membrane.
|This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Gram-positive_bacteria". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.|