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Affixes: the building blocks of English
Affixes: the building blocks of English
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-bacter

A genus of bacteria.

[The first part of English bacterium.]

Most such genus names are the province of specialists, spelled by convention with a capital letter: Azotobacter (obsolete azote, nitrogen) a free-living genus of soil bacteria able to fix nitrogen; Enterobacter (Greek enteron, intestine), a genus whose members are commonly found in faeces and sewage. A few have become more widely known and are commonly spelled without an initial capital letter: acetobacter, bacteria that oxidize organic compounds to acetic acid, as in vinegar formation; campylobacter (Greek kampulos, bent), a type of bacterium which sometimes causes abortion in animals and food poisoning in humans.

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