Elizabethkingia: An Enigmatic Potential Pathogen

Abstract

In 2015, the Oklahoma State University Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology joined forces with research facilities in Colorado to study the then-unsuspecting bacteria. Their goal was to map out the genetic material of the genus and figure out common traits that potentially cause disease. The DNA they found matched with the E. miricola species, which can also cause disease in humans. The main trait that the research team was the bacteria had many different genes that made a defense mechanism known as β-lactamases.