Mycobacterium
![](/Images/godic/202412/22/Mycobacterium_tuberculosis_010520.jpg")
![Mycobacterial cell wall: 1-outer lipids, 2-mycolic acid, 3-polysaccharides (arabinogalactan), 4-peptidoglycan, 5-plasma membrane, 6-lipoarabinomannan (LAM), 7-phosphatidylinositol mannoside, 8-cell wall skeleton](/Images/godic/202412/22/Mycobacterial_cell_wall_diagram0520.png")
![Comparison of protein orthology in M. tuberculosis, M. leprae, and M. smegmatis, three major model systems in Mycobacterium research[12]](/Images/godic/202412/22/Mycobacterium_tuberculosis_leprae_smegmatis_ortholog_comparison_Venn0520.png")
![Phylogenetic Position of the Tubercle Bacilli within the Genus Mycobacterium. The blue triangle corresponds to tubercle bacilli sequences that are identical or differing by a single nucleotide. The sequences of the genus Mycobacterium that matched most closely to those of M. tuberculosis were retrieved from the BIBI database (http://pbil.univ-lyon.fr/bibi/) and aligned with those obtained for 17 smooth and MTBC strains. The unrooted neighbor-joining tree is based on 1,325 aligned nucleotide positions of the 16S rRNA gene. The scale gives the pairwise distances after Jukes-Cantor correction. Bootstrap support values higher than 90% are indicated at the nodes.](/Images/godic/202412/22/Mycobacterium_phylogenetic_tree.svg0520.png")
Mycobacterium is a genus of Actinobacteria, given its own family, the Mycobacteriaceae. The genus includes pathogens known to cause serious diseases in mammals, including tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and leprosy (Mycobacterium leprae). The Greek prefix myco- means "fungus," alluding to the way mycobacteria have been observed to grow in a mold-like fashion on the surface of cultures. (Mycobacteria are not, however, fungi, which are eukaryotes, while all bacteria are prokaryotes.)