Bacillus cecembensis sp. nov., isolated from the Pindari glacier of the Indian Himalayas

Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India Correspondence S Shivaji shivas{at}ccmb.res.in Strain PN5 T is a Gram-positive, aerobic, motile, rod-shaped, peritrichously flagellated bacterium that was isolated from the Pindari glacier using nutrient agar medium. Cells of PN5 T are catalase-positive and oxidase-negative and contain lysine, glutamic acid and alanine in the peptidoglycan (peptidoglycan type A4 ). Further, the cells are characterized by the presence of iso-C 15 : 0 and iso-C 16 : 1 as the predominant fatty acids and MK-7 as the isoprenoid quinone. Based on the above characteristics, strain PN5 T was assigned to the genus Bacillus . Phylogenetic analysis based on the 16S rRNA gene sequence indicated that strain PN5 T clustered with the type strain of Bacillus silvestris with a sequence similarity of 97.2 %. DNA–DNA hybridization between PN5 T and B. silvestris DSM 12223 T resulted in a relatedness of only 15 %, clearly indicating that strain PN5 T represents a novel species. Further, PN5 T was different from B. silvestris with respect to various phenotypic and chemotaxonomic characteristics. Therefore, strain PN5 T is identified as a representative of a novel species of the genus Bacillus , for which the name Bacillus cecembensis sp. nov. is proposed. Bacillus cecembensis is unique among psychrotolerant Bacillus species in containing L -Lys– D -Glu in the cell-wall peptidoglycan. The type strain is PN5 T (=LMG 23935 T =MTCC9127 T =JCM 15113 T ). Abbreviations: Dap, diaminopimelic acid The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain PN5 T is AM773821 . A transmission electron micrograph of a cell of strain PN5 T and 16S rRNA gene sequence-based trees generated by UPGMA, minimum evolution and DNAPARS are available as supplementary material with the online version of this paper.