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The Rickettsiaceae are a family of bacteria, including most notably the genus Rickettsia.
Most human pathogens in this family are in genus Rickettsia. They spend part of their life cycle in the bodies of arthropods such as ticks or lice, and are then transmitted to humans or other mammals by the bite of the arthropod.
It contains Gram-negative bacteria, very sensitive to environmental exposure, and thus adapted to obligate intracellular infection.
Rickettsia rickettsii is considered the prototypical infectious organism in the group.
Similar arthropod borne Rickettsial infections exist in other areas of the world.
| Phylogeny of Rickettsiales | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Robust phylogeny of Rickettsiales from Williams et al. (2007) |
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