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

Abstract

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 A4alpha). 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)).