Salmonella - Salmonella Nomenclature

Salmonella Nomenclature

Initially, each Salmonella species was named according to clinical considerations, e.g., Salmonella typhi-murium (mouse typhoid fever), S. cholerae-suis (hog cholera). After it was recognized that host specificity did not exist for many species, new strains (or serovar, short for serological variants) received species names according to the location at which the new strain was isolated. Later, molecular findings led to the hypothesis that Salmonella consisted of only one species, S. enterica, and the serovar were classified into six groups, two of which are medically relevant. But as this now formalized nomenclature is not in harmony with the traditional usage familiar to specialists in microbiology and infectologists, the traditional nomenclature is common. Currently, there are three recognized species: S. enterica, S. bongori and S. subterranean, with six main subspecies: enterica (I), salamae (II), arizonae (IIIa), diarizonae (IIIb), houtenae (IV), and indica (VI). Historically, serotype (V) was bongori, which is now considered its own species.

The serovar (i.e. serotype) is a classification of Salmonella into subspecies based on antigens that the organism presents. It is based on the Kauffman-White classification scheme that differentiates serological varieties from each other. Serotypes are usually put into subspecies groups after the genus and species, with the serovars/sertypes capitalized but not italicized: an example is Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. Newer methods for Salmonella typing and subtyping include genome-based methods such as pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), Multiple Loci VNTR Analysis (MLVA), Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and (multiplex-) PCR-based methods.