Wikipedia / Treponema
Wikipedia / Treponema
Treponema is a genus of spiral-shaped bacteria. The major treponeme species of human pathogens is Treponema pallidum, whose subspecies are responsible for diseases such as syphilis, bejel, and yaws.
Pathogenicity across species
Only some species of Treponema are pathogenic in humans. Treponema carateum is the cause of pinta which occurs primarily in Central and South America. Treponema paraluiscuniculi is associated with syphilis in rabbits but is not infectious in humans. Treponema succinifaciens has been found in the gut microbiome of traditional rural human populations. Treponema pallidum subspecies endemicum and T. p. ssp pertenue are only moderately invasive in humans (as opposed to T. pallidum pallidum which is highly invasive).
Phylogeny
Nomenclature follows the List of Prokaryotic names with Standing in Nomenclature (LPSN), with the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) taxonomy database used as an additional reference.
The trees below compare a 16S rRNA gene phylogeny from LTP_10_2024 with a genome-based phylogeny from GTDB release R11-RS232.
The GTDB tree shows named species clusters; accession-based placeholder species are omitted. Letter suffixes are GTDB cluster identifiers.
Unassigned Treponema species:
T. calligyrum Noguchi 1913
T. carateum Brumpt 1939 (pinta-causing Treponema)
"Ca. T. intracellulare" Ohkuma et al. 2015 corrig. Oren et al. 2020
"T. legeri" (Duboscq & Lebailly 1912) Zuelzer 1925
"T. macrodentium" Noguchi 1912
T. paraluisleporis Lumeij et al. 1994
T. pertenue (Castellani 1905) Castellani & Chalmers 1910
"T. plautii" Fong et al. 2025
T. refringens (Schaudinn and Hofmann 1905) Castellani and Chalmers
"T. scoliodontum" (Hoffmann 1920) Noguchi 1928 ex Smibert 1984
"T. sinense" Huo et al. 2017 ex Fong et al. 2025
"Ca. T. stenella" Balik et al. 2023
"Ca. T. suis" Molbak et al. 2006 non Kujumgiev & Spassova 1967
"Ca. T. teratonymphae" Noda et al. 2018
"T. trimerodonta" (Hoffmann 1920) Prévot 1940
See also
References