Molecular Identification, Systematics, and Population Structure of Prokaryotes

Prokaryotic systematics is today perhaps one of the most fascinating and fast advancing fields in microbiology. It has become a widely respected scientific discipline, not least because of the application of new ideas and molecular techniques to bacterial identification and classification. Systematics describes the diversity of prokaryotes and classifies or arranges them into groups based on their common similarities. Although a major reason for establishing systematics has been to provide proper identification of bacterial strains, this discipline has developed into a global, multidisciplinary research field providing a phylogenetic framework for various areas within microbiology, including bacterial taxonomy, microbial ecology, clinical microbiology, population genetics, and environmental microbiology.