{"id":3330,"date":"2017-05-08T16:54:19","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T20:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allphasepharma.com\/dir\/?p=3330"},"modified":"2025-09-20T19:08:52","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T01:08:52","slug":"connections-mimaherellia-acinetobacter-double-helix-lwoff-crab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/allphasepharma.com\/dir\/2017\/05\/08\/3330\/connections-mimaherellia-acinetobacter-double-helix-lwoff-crab\/","title":{"rendered":"Connections: From Mima\/Herellea to Acinetobacter to the Double Helix to Lwoff to \u2026 CRAB"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There once was a Scientific American section authored by science historian James Burke called \u2018Connections\u201d. In it James Burke, a true renaissance man, showed us how an ‘internet’ of serendipitous encounters, connections between persons, places and events led to advances in science. His delightful tours through history are testimony to the fact that research rarely follows a straight path, and that circumstances can produce discoveries for the prepared mind.<\/p>\n

Acinetobacter is in the news, esp. the MDR variety aka CRAB which stands for carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii. Reading about the depressingly short list of drugs with any kind of efficacy against this ever more important hospital pathogen, we will have to learn more about Acinetobacters, which encompass not just the A. baumannii, A. calcoaceticus and the unpronounceable A. lwoffi variety but some 20+ more species[1]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was Paul Baumann, a microbiologist working on his dissertation, who took on the task of cataloguing the Mima\/Herellea\/Acinetobacter group of coccobacilli[2]<\/a>. In painstaking work he characterized over 100 isolates based primarily on biochemical features. These were the days before the widespread use of DNA and 16S rRNA typing; nonetheless his techniques were sufficiently precise to bring order to chaos. It was Baumann who suggested putting all oxidase-negative Moraxellae into the Acinetobacter species group. Interestingly, he also used DNA homology data for confirmation. Reading Baumann\u2019s article today, we get a glimpse of the incredible naming confusion that this taxonomist had to deal with.<\/p>\n

Andre Lwoff was a bacteriologist who had already published several articles on Moraxella lwoffii in the 1940s. As a result of Baumann\u2019s work, M. lwoffii was renamed to A. lwoffii. Andre Lwoff later received the Nobel prize in 1965 for his work on lysogeny and bacteriophages. Incidentally, Jacob worked in his lab and also received a Nobel prize that same year.

Jacob, Monod and Feynman were honored together with Lwoff in 1965 \u2013 what an incredible ensemble of geniuses!<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/p>\n

We all know of, or have read, \u201cThe Double Helix\u201d, James Watson\u2019s account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. It is a classic. No need to dwell on the book\u2019s merits and controversies here; this unorthodox report of scientific competition, brilliant deduction, unlikely collaborations and serendipitous encounters and exchanges between researchers from the US and England is a good read even today.<\/p>\n

In the 1950s, top-notch researchers working on the structure of DNA seem to have known each other quite well – \u00a0and followed each others\u2019 every move. But it may be less known that Lwoff wrote a most fascinating review of \u201cThe Double Helix\u201d, analyzing the personalities and the dynamics of the research effort, retelling the story from his vantage point, and providing a psychoanalytical profile of the protagonist and writer, Nobel laureate James Watson himself.<\/p>\n

Lwoff\u2019s article is so much more than just a book review; it is a very personal account and deep reflection on the personalities involved, about human nature, about the uneven gifts of the most gifted, about the human mind, in which supreme intellectual powers may be found paired with subpar emotional intelligence and eccentricities of Freudian proportions. The expression \u201cVerlust der personalen Mitte\u201d comes to mind, a term denoting a loss of balanced psychological functioning along the axes of affect and intellect. It should not come as a surprise that Andre Lwoff was an altogether different kind of person: a humanist and socially-minded individual, a social activist, an artist, while being a first-rate researcher as well.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly perhaps, Lwoff\u2019s review of \u201cThe Double Helix\u201d was published in the Scientific American[3]<\/a> which gave us James Burke and his \u201cConnections\u201d. Burke would have introduced us to even more connections involving the Acinetobacter and other CRAB, but we will have to leave it at that.<\/p>\n

Also, we cannot forget the contribution of another microbiologist who worked on the taxonomy of the Mima \/ Herellea \/ Moraxella \/ Acinetobacter group of pathogens: \u00a0our teacher H.P.R. Seeliger, a salmonella \/ listeria researcher after whom L. seeligeri was named and who was mentioned in these blog pages before. Paul Baumann acknowledged Seeliger\u2019s contributions to the field, suggesting that A. calcoaceticus might be named Lingelsheimia calco-acetica (Beijerinck) Seeliger 1<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Maybe we should have introduced Beijerinck, d’Herelle and von Lingelsheim here as well but \u2013 let\u2019s leave it at that for now.<\/p>\n

References:
\n<\/strong>[1]<\/a> M Phillips.\u00a0 Chapter 224. Acinetobacter. In: Mandell (ed). Principles and Practice of Infectious Disease. Elsevier, 8th<\/sup> ed. 2014
\n[2]<\/a> P Baumann.\u00a0 A Study of the Moraxella Group.\u00a0 II. Oxidative-negative Species (Genus Acinetobacter). J Bacteriol. 1968; 95:1520
\n[3]<\/a> A Lwoff.\u00a0 Books: Truth, truth, what is truth (about how the structure of DNA was discovered)? Sci Am 1968; July, p133ff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There once was a Scientific American section authored by science historian James Burke called \u2018Connections\u201d. In it James Burke, a true renaissance man, showed us how an ‘internet’ of serendipitous encounters, connections between persons, places and events led to advances in science. His delightful tours through history are testimony to Continue reading Connections: From Mima\/Herellea to Acinetobacter to the Double Helix to Lwoff to \u2026 CRAB<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[140],"tags":[2073,1271,2080,403,2085,2075,1915,2087,2074,1583,2088,340,2081,2076,2083,757,2086,2077,2089,2078,1993,2079,2084,2082,2090],"class_list":["post-3330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting_facts","tag-acinetobacter-taxonomy","tag-allphase-pharma-consulting","tag-andre-lwoff","tag-antibiotic-blog","tag-bacteriophage","tag-beijerinck","tag-crab","tag-feynman","tag-h-p-r-seeliger","tag-harald-reinhart","tag-jacob","tag-james-burke","tag-james-watson","tag-l-seeligeri","tag-lingelsheimia","tag-listeria","tag-lysogeny","tag-mimaherellea","tag-monod","tag-moraxella","tag-nobel-prize","tag-paul-baumann","tag-scientific-american","tag-the-double-helix","tag-von-lingelsheim"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/allphasepharma.com\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Acinetobacter-slider.jpg?fit=640%2C180&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4KWFr-RI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6499,"url":"https:\/\/allphasepharma.com\/dir\/2026\/04\/10\/6499\/treating-serious-crab-infections\/","url_meta":{"origin":3330,"position":0},"title":"Treating Serious CRAB Infections","author":"Harald","date":"April 10, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"There are MDR pathogens, and there is carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii, aka CRAB. 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