A member of the family Corynebacteriaceae, which includes rod-shaped bacteria.
From Greek 'koryne' (club) + '-id' (suffix denoting a member or descendant), referring to the club-shaped appearance of these bacteria under a microscope.
Corynebacterium diphtherium, a corynid, was one of the first bacteria definitively linked to disease in the 1880s and became a famous target for early antibiotics—the toxin it produces is so potent that vaccinations against diphtheria have saved millions of lives.
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