Terrabacter lapilli sp. nov., an actinomycete isolated from stone

1 Department of Science Education, Cheju National University, Jeju 690-756, Republic of Korea 2 Department of Food Science and Engineering, Cheju National University, Jeju 690-756, Republic of Korea 3 Educational Science Research Institute, Cheju National University, Jeju 690-756, Republic of Korea Correspondence Soon Dong Lee sdlee{at}cheju.ac.kr A novel actinomycete, designated strain LR-26 T , was isolated from a small stone collected from an agricultural field in Jeju, Republic of Korea. Cells of the organism were strictly aerobic, Gram-positive, non-motile, short rods. Colonies were bright yellow, circular, smooth and translucent. The organism was characterized chemotaxonomically as having LL -diaminopimelic acid in the cell wall, MK-8(H 4 ) as major menaquinone, a polar lipid profile including diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylinositol and unknown phospholipids, iso-C 15 : 0 as the predominant fatty acid and a DNA G+C content of 72.6 mol%. Comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that the organism was related to the genera Intrasporangium , Terracoccus and Terrabacter within the family Intrasporangiaceae . The closest phylogenetic relatives of strain LR-26 T were the type strains of Terrabacter terrae (99.4 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity), Terrabacter aerolatus (99.3 %) and Terrabacter tumescens (99.3 %). DNA–DNA hybridization experiments showed that strain LR-26 T shared low levels of DNA–DNA relatedness with Terrabacter terrae LMG 22921 T (17.6 and 22.8 % from reciprocal experiments) and with Terrabacter tumescens IMSNU 21313 T (27.6 and 34.9 %). The phenotypic data and low levels of DNA–DNA relatedness readily distinguished strain LR-26 T from the type strains of recognized species of the genus Terrabacter , and showed that it therefore represents a novel species. The name Terrabacter lapilli sp. nov. is proposed for this novel actinomycete. The type strain is LR-26 T (=JBRI 2002 T =KCTC 19199 T =DSM 18583 T ). Abbreviations: DAP, diaminopimelic acid The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain LR-26 T is AM690744 . Detailed cellular fatty acid compositions of strain LR-26 T , Terrabacter terrae LMG 22921 T and Terrabacter tumescens IMSNU 23123 T are available as supplementary material with the online version of this paper.