Chlamydia trachomatis, commonly known as chlamydia is a bacterium that causes chlamydia, which can manifest in various ways, including:
- trachoma,
- lymphogranuloma venereum,
- nongonococcal urethritis,
- cervicitis,-
- salpingitis,
- pelvic inflammatory disease.
C. trachomatis is the most common infectious cause of blindness and the most common sexually transmitted bacterium.
Different types of C. trachomatis cause different diseases.
The most common strains cause disease in the genital tract, while other strains cause disease in the eye or lymph nodes.
Like other Chlamydia species, the C. trachomatis life cycle consists of 2 morphologically distinct life stages: elementary bodies and reticulate bodies.
Elementary bodies are spore-like and infectious, whereas reticulate bodies are in the replicative stage and are seen only within host cells.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlamydia_trachomatis
Chlamydia trachomatis is a gram-negative bacterium that can replicate only within a host cell.
The C. trachomatis genome is substantially smaller than that of many other bacteria at approximately 1.04 megabases, encoding approximately 900 genes.
Several important metabolic functions are not encoded in the C. trachomatis genome, and instead, are likely scavenged from the host cell.