A hardy hospital bacterium that often just sits on skin or equipment but can cause hard-to-treat infections in intensive care. Explore its illustrative 3D model, human context, and sources.
CDC describes Acinetobacter as a group of bacteria commonly found in the environment, in soil and water, and states that infections generally occur in people in healthcare settings. A. baumannii can cause bloodstream, urinary tract, lung and wound infections, and CDC notes that in some cases people can carry the bacteria without being infected, known as colonization. Peleg and colleagues describe short, plump Gram-negative rods that are difficult to destain and may therefore be misidentified as Gram-negative or Gram-positive cocci, growing as smooth, sometimes mucoid, grayish white colonies; the genus name itself derives from the Greek for nonmotile. The same review reports that A. baumannii is found only rarely on the skin of people outside hospital.
Carrying this organism is not the same as being ill with it: CDC states that in some cases people carry the bacteria without being infected. Serious disease concentrates in intensive care, in people on ventilators or with catheters, with open surgical wounds, prolonged hospital stays, weakened immune systems, chronic lung disease or diabetes. Antibiotic resistance makes treatment harder but does not by itself make an organism more likely to infect a given person.
Acinetobacter baumannii · A short, plump coccobacillus. Its outline may be more coccal in another growth state; no flagellum is shown. This is a species-informed teaching diagram; colours, proportions, envelope spacing and internal detail are illustrative. The model uses muted illustrative colours; stains, colony pigments and microscopy colourization are not natural cell colours. Anatomy is enlarged for phone viewing. Morphology reference: Acinetobacter baumannii: emergence of a successful pathogen.
Source check: 2026-09-20. Educational content; independent scientific review remains pending.