An important feature of the lysin is that it attacks only anthrax and a rare strain of a closely related bacterium, the scientists say.

However, related bacteria in the genus Salmonella were eventually shown to cause other important infectious diseases.

Another closely related bacterium, Ehrlichia chaffeensis, was identified in 1990.

Coliform : A group of related bacteria whose presence in drinking water may indicate contamination by disease-causing microorganisms.

It is of ecological importance since related bacteria are predominant in mesophilic heavy metal-contaminated environments.

Due to lateral gene transfer, some closely related bacteria can have very different morphologies and metabolisms.

Total coliforms are a group of closely related bacteria that are (with few exceptions) not harmful to humans.

Instead they see genes as moving freely between even distantly related bacteria, with the entire bacterial domain being a single gene pool.

Equally perplexing is the observation that closely related bacteria can be relatively harmless.

Clusters of related bacteria can be represented in the form of a cladogram or phylogram.