page_title: Chlamydia trachomatis
section_title: Life cycle
hierarchical_section_title: Chlamydia trachomatis / Life cycle
context_page_description: Chlamydia trachomatis, commonly known as chlamydia, is a bacterium that causes chlamydia, which can manifest in various ways, including: trachoma, lymphogranuloma venereum, nongonococcal urethritis, cervicitis, salpingitis, pelvic inflammatory disease. C. trachomatis is the most common infectious cause of blindness and the most common sexually transmitted bacterium.
  Different types of C. trachomatis cause different diseases. The most common strains cause disease in the genital tract, while other strains cause disease in the eye or lymph nodes. Like other Chlamydia species, the C. trachomatis life cycle consists of two morphologically distinct life stages: elementary bodies and reticulate bodies. Elementary bodies are spore-like and infectious, whereas reticulate bodies are the replicative stage and are seen only within host cells.
context_section_description: Like other Chlamydia species, C. trachomatis has a life cycle consisting of two morphologically distinct forms. First, C. trachomatis attaches to a new host cell as a small spore-like form called the elementary body. The elementary body enters the host cell, surrounded by a host vacuole, called an inclusion. Within the inclusion, C. trachomatis transforms into a larger, more metabolically active form called the reticulate body. The reticulate body substantially modifies the inclusion, making it a more hospitable environment for rapid replication of the bacteria, which occurs over the following 30 to 72 hours. The massive number of intracellular bacteria then transition back to resistant elementary bodies, before causing the cell to rupture and being released into the environment. These new elementary bodies are then shed in the semen or released from epithelial cells of the female genital tract, and attach to new host cells.
caption: Life cycle