| Morphology | Obesumbacterium proteus |
| CELLULAR |
| Staining | Gram negative |
| Morphology | Pleomorphic rods 0.8-2.0 um in diameter, 1.5-100 um in length (short, "fat" rods predominate when grown in beer wort with live yeasts, long pleomorphic rods usually predominate when grown in most bacteriological media), |
| Motility | Nonmotile |
| Specialized structures |
| Division |
| COLONIAL |
| Solid surface | Very slow growing, forming colonies less than 0.5 mm in diameter on ordinary plating media at 24 h. |
| Liquid |
| Growth Parameters | Obesumbacterium proteus |
| PHYSIOLOGICAL |
| Tropism | |
| Oxygen | Facultatively anaerobic |
| pH | |
| Temperature | Optimum temperature, 32`C |
| Requirements | |
| Products | Acid formed from D-glucose and D-mannose; very few other carbohydrates are fermented. Gas formation during fermentation is variable (original description says gas is produced, but none of the strains studied produced gas). Nitrate is reduced to nitrite. Many biochemical tests normally used for differentiation of Enterobacteriaceae are negative or delayed |
| Enzymes | Lysine decarboxylase is positive. |
| Unique features |
| ENVIRONMENTAL |
| Habitat | Occurs as a brewery contaminant which can survive and grow in the presence of live yeasts during beer production. |
| Lifestyle | |
| Pathogenicity |
| Distribution |
| Genome | Obesumbacterium proteus |
| G+C Mol % | 48-49 (Bd) |
| O. proteus, has two defined biogroups (1 and 2).that are really distinct species which are phenotypically different and only distantly related by DNA/DNA hybridization. |
| Reference | Obesumbacterium proteus |
| First citation | Shimwell, J.L.(1963) Obesumbacterium gen. nov. Brewers.J. 99:759-760 |
| The Prokaryotes | p |
| Bergey's Systematatic | p 506 J.J. Farmer |
| Bergey's Determinative | p 183 |
| References |