Sphingomonas elodea

Sphingomonas elodea is a species of bacteria in the genus Sphingomonas.

Sphingomonas elodea
Scientific classification
Domain:	Bacteria
Phylum:	Pseudomonadota
Class:	Alphaproteobacteria
Order:	Sphingomonadales
Family:	Sphingomonadaceae
Genus:	Sphingomonas
Species:	Sphingomonas elodea
Binomial name
Sphingomonas elodea Vartak et al., 1995[1]
Synonyms
Pseudomonas elodea Kang et al., 1982

This species is important to humans due to the fact that it produces gellan gum, a suitable agar substitute as a gelling agent in various clinical bacteriological media^[2] and especially important for the culture growth of thermophilic microorganisms in solid media.^[3] When the gellan gum-producing bacterium was first isolated from a natural lily pond it was classified as Pseudomonas elodea based on the taxonomic classification of that time.^[4] However, the gellan gum-producing bacterium was subsequently re-classified as Sphingomonas elodea based on the current taxonomic classification.^[5]

Sphingomonas elodea metabolizes maltodextrin (oligosaccharides of glucose) externally into glucose by the putative exo-acting glucosidase.^[6] Sphingomonas elodea utilizes the Entner-Doudoroff pathway for glucose metabolism.^[5]