Clostridium tagluense sp. nov., a psychrotolerant, anaerobic, spore-forming bacterium from permafrost

1 Skryabin Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Microorganisms, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pushchino 142290, Moscow Region, Russian Federation 2 Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pushchino 142290, Moscow Region, Russian Federation 3 Winogradsky Institute of Microbiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 7/2 Prospekt 60-let Oktyabrya, Moscow 117811, Russian Federation Correspondence Stanislav V. Suetin suetin{at}ibpm.pushchino.ru A strictly anaerobic, Gram-positive, psychrotolerant, endospore-forming bacterium (strain A121 T ) was isolated from a permafrost sample collected in the Canadian High Arctic. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain A121 T showed its affiliation with the group of psychrophilic and psychrotolerant members of cluster I of the genus Clostridium , Clostridium bowmanii DSM 14206 T being the closest relative (sequence similarity 98.5 %). Levels of DNA–DNA relatedness between strain A121 T and the type strains of phylogenetically related species ranged from 33 to 52 %. Strain A121 T grew in PY broth at temperatures between 4 and 28 °C (optimum 15–20 °C), at pH 6.0–8.0 (optimum pH 6.5–7.2) and in NaCl concentrations of 0–10.0 % (optimum 0–2.0 %). The strain utilized a narrow range of carbohydrates as sources of carbon and energy, including glucose, fructose, trehalose, maltose and starch; it also hydrolysed gelatin. Predominant fatty acids were C 16 : 1 cis 9, C 16 : 1 cis 9 DMA, C 16 : 0 and C 14 : 0 . The DNA G+C content was 31.5 mol%. On the basis of its overall genotypic and phenotypic characteristics, strain A121 T is classified within a novel species of the genus Clostridium , Clostridium tagluense sp. nov. The type strain is A121 T (=VKM B-2369 T =DSM 17763 T ). The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain A121 T is DQ296031 . Plots showing the effects of temperature and NaCl concentration on growth of strain A121 T , a comparison of the fatty acid profiles of strain A121 T and related type strains and an extended 16S rRNA gene sequence-based neighbour-joining tree are available as supplementary material with the online version of this paper.