For a long time, bacterial taxonomy was considered one of the dullest fields in microbiology, not immediately the preferred discipline of young or ambitious scientists. Recent developments have changed this attitude, mainly because of the spectacular developments witnessed in the last 10 years in the field of sequencing of rRNA and genes coding for rRNA
(rDNA) and their contribution to bacterial phylogeny and in molecular fingerprinting techniques. These techniques revolutionized our insights in the phylogeny and taxonomy of all living organisms. Taxonomy of bacteria finally also could be assigned a place in phylogeny