<unk>  is a genus of aerobic, non-sporulating, non-motile gram-positive bacteria closely related to Mycobacteria and Corynebacteria . While a few species are pathogenic, most are benign and have been found to thrive in a broad range of environments, including soil, water, and eukaryotic cells. Fully sequenced in October 2006, the genome is know to be 9.7 megabasepairs long and 67% G/C .
Strains of<unk>  are applicably important due to their ability to catabolize a wide range of compounds and produce bioactive steroids, acrylamide and acrylic acid and their involvement in fossil fuel biodesulfurization . This genetic and catabolic diversity is not only due to the large bacterial chromosome, but the presence of three large linear plasmids.<unk>   is also an experimentally advantageous system due to a relatively fast growth rate and simple developmental cycle. However, as it stands now,<unk>  is not well characterized .
Another important application of<unk>  comes from bioconversion, utilizing biological systems to convert cheap starting material into more valuable compounds. This use of<unk>  is born out of its ability to metabolize harmful environmental pollutants such as toluene, naphthalene, herbicides, PCBs. Rhodococci typically metabolize aromatic substrates by first oxygenating the aromatic ring to form a diol (two alcohol groups). Then, the ring is cleaved with  intra/extradiol mechanisms, opening the ring and exposing the substrate to further metabolism. Since the chemistry here is very stereospecific, the diols are created with predictable chirality. While controlling the chirality of chemical reaction presents a significant challenge for synthetic chemists, biological processes can be used instead to faithfully produce chiral molecules in cases where direct chemical synthesis is infeasible or inefficient. An example of this is the use of<unk>   to produce indene, a precursor to the AIDS drug Crixivan(TM), a protease inhibitor, and containing two of the five chiral centers needed in the complex .
Rhodococcus
Legionella
Pseudomonas
Mycoplasma
Streptococcus
Corynebacterium
Peptococcus
Neisseria