Enterobacter sakazakii

Enterobacter sakazakii is a Gram-negative rod-shaped pathogenic bacterium of the genus Enterobacter. It is a rare cause of invasive infection with historically high case fatality rates (40–80%) in infants.

It can cause bacteraemia, meningitis and necrotising enterocolitis. E. sakazakii infection has been associated with the use of infant formula.

Taxonomy
E. sakazakii was defined as a new species in 1980 by Farmer et al. 1980. DNA-DNA hybridization showed that E. sakazakii was 53–54% related to species in two different genera, Enterobacter and Citrobacter. However diverse biogroups were described and Farmer et al. suggested that these may represent different species. In 2007, a group of researchers clarified the taxonomic relationship E. sakazakii strains using f-AFLP, automated ribotyping, full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing and DNA-DNA hybridization. This resulted in the proposal of an alternative classification of of E. sakazakii as a new genus, Cronobacter, comprising five species