nocardia

Main Entry: no·car·dia
Pronunciation: nO-'kärd-E-&
Function: noun
1 capitalized : a genus of aerobic actinomycetousbacteria that form limited mycelia which tend to break up into rod-shaped cells and occas. form spores by fragmentation but develop neither conidia nor endospores and that include various pathogens aswell as some soil-dwelling saprophytes
2 : any bacterium of the genus Nocardia —no·car·di·al /-&l/ adjective
Noácard /no-kär/, Edmond–Isidore–Étienne (1850–1903), French veterinarian and biologist. Nocard was an instructor at a veterinary schoolnear Paris and later became its director. As an assistant to Pasteur, he worked on communicable diseases in mammals. In 1885 he described the organism causing pseudotuberculosis in sheep, cattle, andhorses. He developed a method for the early diagnosis of glanders in horses, and in 1888 he published a description of bovine glanders. The genus of fungi now known as Nocardia was named in hishonor because the first species to be described was isolated by Nocard from glanders in cattle.

Nocardia No·car·di·a (nō-kär'dē-ə)
n.
A genus of aerobic, gram-positive, primarily saprophytic actinomycetes, that are transitional between bacteria and fungi and that form filaments that fragment to single nonmotile microorganisms, including some species that may be pathogenic to humans and other animals.