Enterobacteriaceae

The Enterobacteriaceae are a large family of Gram-negative bacteria that includes, along with many harmless symbionts, many of the more familiar pathogens, such as Salmonella, Escherichia coli, Yersinia pestis, Klebsiella and Shigella. Other disease-causing bacteria in this family include Proteus, Enterobacter, Serratia, and Citrobacter. This family is the only representative in the order Enterobacteriales of the class Gammaproteobacteria in the phylum Proteobacteria. Phylogenetically, in the Enterobacteriales, several peptidoglycan-less insect endosymbionts form a sister clade to the Enterobacteriaceae, but as they are not validly described, this group is not officially a taxon; examples of these species are Sodalis, Buchnera, Wigglesworthia, Baumannia cicadellinicola and Blochmannia, but not former Rickettsias. Members of the Enterobacteriaceae can be trivially referred to as enterobacteria or "enteric bacteria", as several members live in the intestines of animals. In fact, the etymology of the family is enterobacterium with the suffix to designate a family (aceae) — not after the genus Enterobacter (which would be "Enterobacteraceae")— and the type genus is Escherichia.