Description[edit]
Bacillus subtilis is a Gram-positive bacterium, rod-shaped and catalase-positive. It was originally named Vibrio subtilis by Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg,[3] and renamed Bacillus subtilis by Ferdinand Cohn in 1872[4] (subtilis being the latin for 'fine'). B. subtilis cells are typically rod-shaped, and are about 4-10 micrometers (μm) long and 0.25–1.0 μm in diameter, with a cell volume of about 4.6 fL at stationary phase.[5] As other members of the genus Bacillus, it can form an endospore, to survive extreme environmental conditions of temperature and desiccation.[6] B. subtilis is a facultative anaerobe[7] and had been considered as an obligate aerobe until 1998. B. subtilis is heavily flagellated, which gives it the ability to move quickly in liquids. B. subtilis has proven highly amenable to genetic manipulation, and has become widely adopted as a model organism for laboratory studies, especially of sporulation, which is a simplified example of cellular differentiation. In terms of popularity as a laboratory model organism, B. subtilis is often considered as the Gram-positive equivalent of Escherichia coli, an extensively studied Gram-negative bacterium.[citation needed]