Enterococcus thailandicus sp. nov., isolated from fermented sausage ('mum') in Thailand.

A Gram-positive and catalase-negative coccus that formed chains, designated strain FP48-3(T), isolated from fermented sausage ('mum'), was studied systematically. Strain FP48-3(T) was facultatively anaerobic and produced l-lactic acid from glucose. Straight-chain fatty acids C(18 : 1) and C(16 : 0) were the dominant components. The DNA G+C content of strain FP48-3(T) was 37.9 mol%. On the basis of 16S rRNA and RNA polymerase alpha-subunit (rpoA) gene sequence analysis, strain FP48-3(T) was closely related to Enterococcus hirae LMG 6399(T), Enterococcus durans LMG 10746(T) and Enterococcus faecium LMG 11423(T), with 99.3-99.6 and 95.1-96.9 % sequence similarities, respectively. Strain FP48-3(T) could be clearly distinguished from E. hirae LMG 6399(T), E. durans LMG 10746(T) and E. faecium LMG 11423(T) by low DNA-DNA relatedness (< or =14 %) and phenotypic characteristics. Therefore, this strain represents a novel species of the genus Enterococcus, for which the name Enterococcus thailandicus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is FP48-3(T) (=KCTC 13134(T)=NBRC 101867(T)=NRIC 0107(T)=TISTR 933(T)=PCU 282(T)).