Treponema Pallidum

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Treponema pallidum is a species of spirochaete bacterium with subspecies that cause treponemal diseases such as syphilis, bejel, pinta and yaws. It is not seen on a Gram stained smear because the organism is too thin.There is some variation as to which are considered subspecies, and which are species. The cause of pinta is sometimes described as "Treponema carateum," rather than a subspecies of Treponema pallidum, even when the subspecies convention is used for the other agents.This bacterium is too thin to be visualized with a standard Gram stain so, two techniques to visualize it with a light microscope are dark field microscopy and immunofluorescence.