TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Genetics A1 - Levinson, Warren A1 - Chin-Hong, Peter A1 - Joyce, Elizabeth A. A1 - Nussbaum, Jesse A1 - Schwartz, Brian PY - 2022 T2 - Review of Medical Microbiology & Immunology: A Guide to Clinical Infectious Diseases, 17e AB - There are several unique aspects of microbial genetics that largely account for the great genotypic and phenotypic diversity, the ability to cause disease, and the propensity to develop resistance to virtually any antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections. Bacteria have a simple genetic organization relative to eukaryotic organisms. They are haploid, usually possessing a single chromosome and therefore a single copy of each gene. This is in contrast to eukaryotic cells (such as human cells), which are diploid, meaning they have a pair of each chromosome and therefore have two copies of each gene. In diploid cells, one copy of a gene (allele) may be expressed as a protein (i.e., be dominant), whereas another allele may not be expressed (i.e., be recessive). In haploid cells, any gene that has acquired a mutation will result in a cell synthesizing either a mutant protein or no protein at all depending on the type of mutation. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/03/28 UR - accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1190859092 ER -