Shigella flexneri
species of bacterium
Shigella flexneri is a species of Gram-negative bacteria in the genus Shigella that can cause diarrhea in humans. Several different serogroups of Shigella are described; S. flexneri belongs to group B. S. flexneri infections which can usually be treated with antibiotics, although some strains have become resistant. Less severe cases are not usually treated because they become more resistant in the future. Shigella are closely related to Escherichia coli, but can be differentiated from E.coli based on pathogenicity, physiology (failure to ferment lactose or decarboxylate lysine) and serology.
Discovery
The species was named after the American physician Simon Flexner; the genus Shigella is named after Japanese physician Kiyoshi Shiga, who researched the cause of dysentery. Shiga entered the Tokyo Imperial University School of Medicine in 1892, during which he attended a lecture by Shibasaburo Kitasato. After graduating, Shiga went to work for Kitasato as a research assistant at Institute for Infectious Diseases. In 1897, Shiga focused his efforts on what the Japanese referred to as a "Sekiri" (dysentery) outbreak. These epidemics occurred often in the late 19th century. The 1897 sekiri epidemic affected >91,000, with a mortality rate of >20%.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Shigella flexneri” as species of bacterium. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of bacterium. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1644417. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1892 and 1897.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shigella flexneri” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.