Detection of genital mycoplasmas by PCR.

Mycoplasmas are the smallest prokaryotes capable of self-replication. They belong to the class Mollicutes (meaning soft-skin) and have evolved regressively, by genome reduction, from Gram-positive bacterial ancestors, namely certain clostridia (1). The taxonomy of the class Mollicutes containing four orders, five families, and eight genera, is shown in Table 1 (2). The term 'mollicute' is sometimes used trivially to describe any organism in the class. The term 'mycoplasma' might be used best to describe any member of the genus Mycoplasma, but is also used, as in this chapter, in a trivial way to refer to any organism in the class.