what are mollicutes, their types and importance and their management ...

1. Importance & Management of
Mollicutes
Submitted By:
M. ZeeShan
BZU, Bahadur Campus layyah
Department of Plant Pathology

2. Mollicutes
• In 1967 Edward and Freundt made a first proposal for classifying
and naming mollicutes
• Mollicutes is a class of bacteria distinguished by the absence of a
cell wall e.g. Mycoplasma and Spiroplasma
• Mollicutes are the smallest and simplest known free-living and
self-replicating forms of life
• They are bacteria of Gram-positive origin
• The word Mollicutes is derived from the Latin mollis (meaning soft
or pliable) and cutis (skin)
• Individuals are very small typically only200-300 nm in size

3. Disease and symptoms
oDisease
• Bunchy top of banana
• Bunchy top papaya
• Little leaf of eggplant
• Little leaf of legumes
• Mulberry dwarf
o Symptoms
• Stunting
• Phyllody
• Abnormal fruits and seeds
• Sterile flower

4. What do they look like
•The mollicutes completely lack cell walls and have
only a unit membrane containing cholesterol
•They are polar and their shape is relatively well
defined although it can be variable

5. Diff. b/w Mollicutes and Bacteria
Property Mollicutes eubacteria
Cell wall Absent Present
No. of rRNA 1–2 1-10
RNA polymerase Resistant to rifampicin Rifampicin sensitive
G + C content of genome 23-41% 25-75%
Plasma membrane Cholesterol present Cholesterol absent

6. Diff. b/w Spiroplasma and Mycoplasma
Spiroplasma
• Cells bounded by a single
membrane with no cell wall
• Cells helical during logarithm
growth and spherical during
stationary phase
Mycoplasma
• Cells are bonded by a single
trilaminar unit membrane and
contain ribosomes and
chromatin
• Large globular bodies seen in
late season while branched
fliamentous forms are seen in
early in early season

7. Importance
• Abundance of neutral lipid in the plasma membrane makes
them resistance to polymyxin
• The production of extracellular vesicles recognized as an
extremely important process of mollicutes
• EV also participate in the removal of toxic compounds and
antimicrobial from host cells
• They are osmotically fragile and exhibit plasticity and
pleomorphism

8. Conti…
• Mollicutes can turn excess quantities of the amino acid
arginine into a nitrogen-rich fertilizer
•Mollicutes are also of importance as model organisms in
which to study membrane structure and function

9. Management
• The antibiotic are widely used to treat mollicutes infection
and to eliminate mollicutes contamination of cell culture
(tetracycline)
• The use of antimicrobial peptides (compound consisting of
two or more amino acids linked in a chain) including mellitin
globomicim, gramicidin valinomycin from bacteria,
alamethicin from fungi

10. References
https://www.sciencedirect.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollicutes
https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/
https://www.cell.com/current-biology