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 A4α). 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 PN5T 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).