Three strains of a spore-forming, Gram-positive, motile, rod-shaped and boron-tolerant bacterium were isolated from soil. The strains, designated 10a(T), 11c and 12B, can tolerate 5 % (w/v) NaCl and up to 150 mM boron, but optimal growth was observed without addition of boron or NaCl in Luria-Bertani agar medium. The optimum temperature for growth was 37 degrees C (range 16-45 degrees C) and the optimum pH was 7.0-8.0 (range pH 5.5-9.5). A comparative analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence demonstrated that the isolated strains were closely related to Bacillus fusiformis DSM 2898(T) (97.2 % similarity) and Bacillus sphaericus DSM 28(T) (96.9 %). DNA-DNA relatedness was greater than 97 % among the isolated strains and 61.1 % with B. fusiformis DSM 2898(T) and 43.2 % with B. sphaericus IAM 13420(T). The phylogenetic and phenotypic analyses and DNA-DNA relatedness indicated that the three strains belong to the same species, that was characterized by a DNA G+C content of 36.5-37.9 mol%, MK-7 as the predominant menaquinone system and iso-C(15 : 0) (32 % of the total) as a major cellular fatty acid. In contrast to the type species of the genus Bacillus, the strains contained peptidoglycan with lysine, aspartic acid, alanine and glutamic acid. Based on the distinctive peptidoglycan composition, phylogenetic analyses and physiology, the strains are assigned to a novel species within a new genus, for which the name Lysinibacillus boronitolerans gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain of Lysinibacillus boronitolerans is strain 10a(T) (=DSM 17140(T)=IAM 15262(T)=ATCC BAA-1146(T)). It is also proposed that Bacillus fusiformis and Bacillus sphaericus be transferred to this genus as Lysinibacillus fusiformis comb. nov. and Lysinibacillus sphaericus comb. nov., respectively.