The Family Acholeplasmataceae (Including Phytoplasmas)The Prokaryotes

The family Acholeplasmataceae was originally established to accommodate the genus Acholeplasma, comprising the mollicutes that could be cultivated without the supplement of cholesterol and that use UGA as a stop codon instead of coding for tryptophan. It was later shown that the phytoplasmas, a large group of uncultivable, wall-less, non-helical mollicutes that are associated with plants and insects, shared taxonomically relevant properties with members of the genus Acholeplasma. Being not cultivable in vitro in axenic culture, the phytoplasmas could not be classified using the standards used for other mollicutes and are named using the category of Candidatus, as “Ca. Phytoplasma.” Although phytoplasmas are associated with habitats and ecology different from acholeplasmas, the two genera Acholeplasma and “Candidatus Phytoplasma” are phylogenetically related and form a distinct clade within the Mollicutes. The persisting inability to grow the phytoplasmas in vitro hinders the identification of their distinctive phenotypic traits, important criteria for mollicute classification. Until supplemental phenotypic traits become available, the genus “Candidatus Phytoplasma” is designated, on the basis of phylogeny, as a tentative member in the family Acholeplasmataceae. Phylogenetic analysis based on gene sequences, in particular, ribosomal sequences, has provided the major supporting evidence for the composition and taxonomic subdivision of this group of organisms with diverse habitats and ecology and has become the mainstream for the Acholeplasmataceae systematics. However, without the ability to determine phenotypic properties, the circumscription of related species among the non culturable members of the family remains a major issue. The genus Acholeplasma comprises 14 species predominantly associated with animals and isolated from mammalian fluids but regarded as not normally pathogenic. Conversely, the genus “Ca. Phytoplasma” includes plant pathogens of major economic relevance worldwide. To date, 36 “Ca. Phytoplasma species” have been described

Energy calibration and resolution of the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter in pp collisions at s\sqrt{s} = 7 TeV

The energy calibration and resolution of the electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) of the CMS detector have been determined using proton-proton collision data from LHC operation in 2010 and 2011 at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s)=7 TeV with integrated luminosities of about 5 inverse femtobarns. Crucial aspects of detector operation, such as the environmental stability, alignment, and synchronization, are presented. The in-situ calibration procedures are discussed in detail and include the maintenance of the calibration in the challenging radiation environment inside the CMS detector. The energy resolution for electrons from Z-boson decays is better than 2% in the central region of the ECAL barrel (for pseudorapidity abs(eta)<0.8) and is 2-5% elsewhere. The derived energy resolution for photons from 125 GeV Higgs boson decays varies across the barrel from 1.1% to 2.6% and from 2.2% to 5% in the entraps. The calibration of the absolute energy is determined from Z to e+e- decays to a precision of 0.4% in the barrel and 0.8% in the endcaps