bacterium
noun
Note: Bacteria lack a nuclear membrane or membrane-bound organelles and are categorized as gram-positive or gram-negative when a cell wall is present. While many bacteria are aerobic requiring the presence of oxygen to survive, others are anaerobic and are able to survive only in the absence of oxygen.
compare archaea, eukaryoteExamples of bacterium in a Sentence
Steffini Stalos, Verywell Health, 3 Oct. 2024
The lab did not specify whether the sick deer was a doe or a buck.
Plague, also known as black plague, is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which occurs naturally in the western U.S. and passes through the food chain in various vector species like rodents and fleas.
—Katie Hill, Outdoor Life, 25 Sep. 2024
Vancomycin—essentially a biochemical weapon that one bacterium uses to kill others—was discovered in soil samples from India and Indonesia in 1953.
—Dhruv Khullar, The New Yorker, 2 Sep. 2024
When a clinic in Egypt failed to help his worsening symptoms, Patterson was flown to Germany, where doctors discovered a grapefruit-size abdominal abscess filled with Acinetobacter baumannii, a virulent bacterium resistant to nearly all antibiotics.
—Jacqueline Howard, CNN, 16 Sep. 2024
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“Bacterium.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bacterium. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.
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bacterium
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