Lactobacillus suantsaicola sp. nov. and Lactobacillus suantsaiihabitans sp. nov., isolated from suan-tsai, a traditional fermented mustard green product of Taiwan

Four Gram-stain-positive strains, R7 , R11, R19 and R27, were isolated from suan-tsai, a traditional fermented mustard green product of Taiwan. Cells were rod-shaped, non-motile, non-haemolytic, asporogenous, facultatively anaerobic, heterofermentative, and did not exhibit catalase and oxidase activities. Comparative analyses of 16S rRNA, and gene sequences demonstrated that these novel strains were members of the genus . 16S rRNA and the concatenated and gene sequence similarities between strains R7 and R11, and strains R19 and R27 were very high (>99.8 % similarity), respectively. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities, the type strains of (98.5 %), (98.5 %), (98.1 %) and (98.1 %) were the closest neighbours to strains R7 and R11, and the type strains of (98.9 %), (98.4 %), (98.4 %), (98.4 %) and (98.0 %) were the closest neighbours to strains R19 and R27, respectively. The average nucleotide identity values of R7 and R19 with the closely related type strains were 78.9-80.1% and 75.7-80.5 %, respectively. The digital DNA-DNA hybridization values were 22.8-23.6% and 21.0-23.1 %, respectively. Phenotypic and genotypic test results demonstrated that these strains represent two novel species of the genus , for which the name sp. nov. (R7 =BCRC 81127 =NBRC 113530 ) and sp. nov. (R19 =BCRC 81129 =NBRC 113532 ) are proposed.