[2][3] While a few species are pathogenic, most are benign, and have been found to thrive in a broad range of environments, including soil, water, and eukaryotic cells.

[4] Strains of Rhodococcus are important owing to their ability to catabolize a wide range of compounds and produce bioactive steroids, acrylamide, and acrylic acid, and their involvement in fossil fuel biodesulfurization.

[2] Rhodococcus is also an experimentally advantageous system owing to a relatively fast growth rate and simple developmental cycle, but is not well characterized.

[4] Another important application of Rhodococcus comes from bioconversion, using biological systems to convert cheap starting material into more valuable compounds, such as its ability to metabolize harmful environmental pollutants, including toluene, naphthalene, herbicides, and PCBs.

[5] Rhodococcus has been greatly researched as a potential agent for the bioremediation of pollutants as it is commonly found in the natural environment, and they possess certain characteristics that allow them to thrive under a variety of conditions, and they have the capability to metabolize many hydrocarbons.

However, it has a wide host range, sporadically infecting pigs, cattle, and immunocompromised humans, in particular AIDS patients and those undergoing immunosuppressive therapy.

Rhodococcus has also been identified as a contaminant of DNA extraction kit reagents and ultrapure water systems, which may lead to its erroneous appearance in microbiota or metagenomic datasets.