nocardia

A vernacular term used to refer to any member of the genus N..

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no·car·dia nō-'kärd-ē-ə n

1) cap a genus of aerobic actinomycetous bacteria that form limited mycelia which tend to break up into rod-shaped cells and occas. form spores by fragmentation but develop neither conidia nor endospores and that include various pathogens as well as some soil-dwelling saprophytes

2) any bacterium of the genus Nocardia

no·car·di·al -əl adj

No·card nȯ-kär Edmond-Isidore-Étienne (1850-1903)

French veterinarian and biologist. Nocard was an instructor at a veterinary school near Paris and later became its director. As an assistant to Pasteur, he worked on communicable diseases in mammals. In 1885 he described the organism causing pseudotuberculosis in sheep, cattle, and horses. He developed a method for the early diagnosis of glanders in horses, and in 1888 he published a description of bovine glanders. The genus of fungi now known as Nocardia was named in his honor because the first species to be described was isolated by Nocard from glanders in cattle.

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n.

a genus of rodlike or filamentous Gram-positive nonmotile bacteria found in the soil. As cultures age, filaments form branches, but these soon break up into rodlike or spherical cells. Three or more spores may form in each cell; these germinate to form filaments. Some species are pathogenic: N. asteroides causes nocardiosis and N. madurae is associated with the disease Madura foot.

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No·car·dia (no-kahrґde-ə) [Edmond Isidore Etienne Nocard, French veterinarian, 1850–1903] a large genus of bacteria of the family Nocardiaceae, consisting mainly of soil saprophytes; a few are pathogenic. Organisms are gram-positive and aerobic, with branching filaments that break into bacillary or coccal forms, and produce chains of spores by simple fragmentation of hyphal branches. The type species is N. asteroiґdes.