PMC9833420_01
(a) A clinical timeline of fevers, bacterial and fungal organisms isolated from the patient presented in this case. Each individual bar represents a unique blood culture order where the corresponding organism was isolated. (b) Image of a Gram stain of Acetobacter tropicalis showing short pleomorphic GNRs. (c) Colony morphology on Columbia agar with 5% sheep blood growing A. tropicalis at 48 h incubation. (d) Colonies enhanced 2.25x.
acmi-4-374-g001.jpg
PMC9833420_02_acmi-4-374-g001.jpg
F1
Shortly thereafter, another set of blood cultures became positive after 28 h of incubation and direct Gram stain demonstrated the presence of both fungal septate hyphae and small pleomorphic Gram-negative rods (GNRs) (Fig. 1b). The blood culture bottles were sub-cultured at 37  C and 5% CO2, yielding the growth of two organisms; a white mould - later identified as F. proliferatum - and grey bacterial colonies on the Columbia sheep blood agar (Fig. 1c) and chocolate agar, with no growth on MacConkey agar.
PMC9833420_02
(a) A clinical timeline of fevers, bacterial and fungal organisms isolated from the patient presented in this case. Each individual bar represents a unique blood culture order where the corresponding organism was isolated. (b) Image of a Gram stain of Acetobacter tropicalis showing short pleomorphic GNRs. (c) Colony morphology on Columbia agar with 5% sheep blood growing A. tropicalis at 48 h incubation. (d) Colonies enhanced 2.25x.
acmi-4-374-g001.jpg
PMC9833420_02_acmi-4-374-g001.jpg
F1
Shortly thereafter, another set of blood cultures became positive after 28 h of incubation and direct Gram stain demonstrated the presence of both fungal septate hyphae and small pleomorphic Gram-negative rods (GNRs) (Fig. 1b). The blood culture bottles were sub-cultured at 37  C and 5% CO2, yielding the growth of two organisms; a white mould - later identified as F. proliferatum - and grey bacterial colonies on the Columbia sheep blood agar (Fig. 1c) and chocolate agar, with no growth on MacConkey agar.
The phylogenetic tree of the sequence data for the isolate presented in this case indicating the sequence is part of the genus Acetobacter (QRY_PATIENT_ISOLATE_2025500670) and falls within Acetobacter tropicalis cluster. These data are generated using the leBIBI IV SSU-rDNA (16S) Automated ProKaryotes Phylogeny software (https://umr5558-proka.univ-lyon1.fr/PKPhy/PKPhy.html) which BLAST, aligns and assigns phylogeny to sequence data using an approximately maximum-likelihood approach. The query sequence (black) is surrounded by closely related nodes (orange and blue), as well as nodes that share common ancestors (green), while distantly related nodes are grey. Scale bar indicates nucleotide substitutions per site.
acmi-4-374-g002.jpg
PMC9833420_02_acmi-4-374-g002.jpg
F2
Subsequent phylogenetic analysis of the 16S sequence data using a maximum-likelihood approach and a k-nearest neighbour classifier rRNA sequence database query identified the isolate to species-level as   A. tropicalis   (Fig. 2).