Bacillus cavernae sp. nov. isolated from cave soil

Abstract

A Gram-stain-positive, spore-forming, motile, strictly aerobic, rod-shaped bacterium, designated strain L5^T, was isolated from soil of Tenglong cave, China. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that strain L5^T was related most closely to Bacillus asahii MA001^T (96.5 %) (the highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity), Bacillus kribbensis BT080^T (96.4 %) and Bacillus deserti ZLD-8^T (96.2 %). The DNA G+C content of strain L5^T was 45.6 mol%. The major menaquinone was MK-7. The major fatty acids were iso-C_{14 : 0}, anteiso-C_{15 : 0} and iso-C_{16 : 0}, and the major polar lipids were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylethanolamine. The diagnostic diamino acid in the cell-wall peptidoglycan was meso-diaminopimelic acid. In addition, strain L5^T had different characteristics compared with the other Bacillus strains such as pink colony colour, low growth temperature and low nutrient requirement. The results indicate that strain L5^T represents a novel species of the genus Bacillus, for which the name Bacillus cavernae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is L5^T ( = KCTC 33637^T = CCTCC AB 2015055^T).