| Morphology | Actinomyces |
| CELLULAR |
| Staining | Gram positive but stain irregularly not acid fast |
| Morphology | form straight or slightly curved rods and slender filaments with true branching. Short rods with or without clubbed ends may occur singly in pairs with diptheroid arrangements in short chains or in small clulsters. Filaments are either straight or wavy with varying degress of branching and may have swollen, clubbed or clavate ends. |
| Motility | nonmotile |
| Specialized structures | non spore forming |
| Division |
| COLONIAL |
| Solid surface | They often produce filamentous microcolonies but mature colonies are either rough and dry to crumbly or smooth and soft to mucoid. Most colonies are white to grey white or creamy white but A . odontolyticuys forms a deep red colony on blood agar and A. denticolens forms pink colonies |
| Liquid |
| Growth Parameters | Actinomyces |
| PHYSIOLOGICAL |
| Tropism | hemoorganotrophs |
| Oxygen | facultative anaerobes ermentative metabolism |
| pH | |
| Temperature | Optimum or growth is 35-37 C. |
| Requirements | require carbon dioxide for maximum growth. . Organic nitrogen is required for growth |
| Products | formic, acetic, lactic and succinic but not propionic acid are the end products of glucose fermentation Indole is not produced |
| Enzymes | |
| Unique features | Amino acids of the cell wall peptidoglycan are lysine. Ornithine or aspartic acid may or may not be present. Diaminopimelic acid and glycine are absent. |
| ENVIRONMENTAL |
| Habitat | |
| Lifestyle | |
| Pathogenicity |
| Distribution |
| Genome | Actinomyces |
| G+C Mol % |
| Reference | Actinomyces |
| First citation | Harz,C.O. 1877. Actinomyces bovis, ein neuer Schimmel in den Geweben des Rindes. Jahresber. K. Zentralbl. Thierarz. Sch. Munchen Fur 1877/1878,5:125-140 |
| The Prokaryotes | P |
| Bergey's Systematatic | p 1383 K. P. Schaal |
| Bergey's Determinative | p 571 |
| References |