Bacillus polygoni sp. nov., a moderately halophilic, non-motile obligate alkaliphile isolated from indigo balls

1 Research Institute of Genome-based Biofactory, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukisamu-Higashi, Toyohira-ku, Sapporo 062-8517, Japan 2 Department of Bioscience and Technology, School of Engineering, Hokkaido Tokai University, Minamisawa, Minami-ku, Sapporo 005-8601, Japan 3 Graduate School of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-8589, Japan 4 Laboratory of Electron Microscopy, Graduate School of Dentistry, Hokkaido University, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-8586, Japan 5 Department of Biological Science, Faculty of Science, Shizuoka University, 836 Ohya, Suruga-ku, Shizuoka 422-8529, Japan Correspondence Isao Yumoto i.yumoto{at}aist.go.jp A moderately halophilic, obligate alkaliphile (growth range pH 8–12), designated strain YN-1 T , was isolated from indigo balls obtained from Ibaraki, Japan. The cells of the isolate stained Gram-positive, and were aerobic, non-motile, sporulating rods which grew optimally at pH 9. The strain grew in 3–14 % NaCl with optimum growth in 5 % NaCl. It hydrolysed casein and Tweens 20, 40 and 60, but not gelatin, starch, DNA or pullulan. Its major isoprenoid quinone was MK-7 and its cellular fatty acid profile mainly consisted of anteiso-C 15 : 0 , anteiso-C 17 : 0 and anteiso-C 17 : 1 . 16S rRNA phylogeny suggested that strain YN-1 T was a member of group 7 (alkaliphiles) of the genus Bacillus , with the closest relative being Bacillus clarkii DSM 8720 T (similarity 99.5 %). However, DNA–DNA hybridization showed a low DNA–DNA relatedness (7 %) of strain YN-1 T with B . clarkii DSM 8720 T . Owing to the significant differences in phenotypic and chemotaxonomic characteristics, and phylogenetic and DNA–DNA relatedness data, the isolate merits classification as a new species, for which the name Bacillus polygoni is proposed. The type strain of this species is YN-1 T (=JCM 14604 T =NCIMB 14282 T ). The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA sequence reported in this paper is AB292819 . Supplementary figures showing maximum-parsimony and minimum-evolution phylogenetic trees are available with the online version of this paper.