Burkholderia mallei

Burkholderia mallei is a gram-negative bipolar aerobic bacterium, a Burkholderia-genus human and animal pathogen causing Glanders; the Latin name of this disease (malleus) gave its name to the species causing it. It is closely related to B. pseudomallei, and by multilocus sequence typing it is a subspecies of B. pseudomallei. B. mallei evolved from B. pseudomallei by selective reduction and deletions from the B. pseudomallei genome. Unlike closely related Burkholderia pseudomallei and other genus members, the bacterium is nonmotile; its shape is something in between a rod and a coccus measuring some 1.5–3 μm in length and 0.5–1μm in diameter with rounded ends.