Alteromonas

Alteromonas is a genus of Proteobacteria found in sea water, either in the open ocean or in the coast. It is Gram-negative. Its cells are curved rods with a single polar flagellum. The etymology of the genus is Latin alter -tera -terum, another, different; monas (μονάς), a noun with a special meaning in microbiology used to mean unicellular organism; to give Alteromonas, another monad Members of the genus Alteromonas can be referred to as alteromonads (viz. Trivialisation of names). The genus was described by Baumann et al. in 1972, but was emended by Novick and Tyler 1985 to accommodate Alteromonas luteoviolacea (now Pseudoalteromonas luteoviolacea), Gauthier et al. 1995, who split the genus in two (Pseudoalteromonas) and Van Trappen et al. in 2004 to accommodate Alteromonas stellipolaris. The genus contains eight species (but 21 basonyms), namely Many alteromonads were reclassified as members of Pseudoalteromonas in 1995