Cellulomonas chitinilytica sp. nov., a chitinolytic bacterium isolated from cattle-farm compost.

A bacterial strain, designated X.bu-b T, with chitin-, xylan-, cellulose- and starch-degrading activities, was isolated from compost at a cattle farm near Daejeon, Republic of Korea. The strain comprised Gram-positive, aerobic or facultatively anaerobic, non-motile, rod-shaped bacteria. On the basis of an analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences, the phylogenetic position of X.bu-b T was within the genus Cellulomonas, and the strain exhibited relatively high sequence similarities with respect to Cellulomonas biazotea DSM 20112T (98.1 %), C. cellasea DSM 20118T (98.1 %), C. fimi DSM 20113T (98.0 %), C. terrae DB5T (97.9 %), C. humilata ATCC 25174T (97.7 %), C. xylanilytica XIL11 T (97.5 %), C. uda DSM 20107T (97.4 %), C. gelida DSM 20111 T (97.3 %), C. iranensis OT (97.3 %) and C. flavigena DSM 20109T (97.0 %). The phylogenetic distance from other Cellulomonas species with validly published names was greater than 3 % (i.e. less than 97.0 % sequence similarity). Chemotaxonomic data also supported the classification of strain X.bu-b T within the genus Cellulomonas: L-ornithine was the cell-wall diamino acid, anteiso-C15:0 and anteiso-C17:0 were the major fatty acids, rhamnose, galactose, xylose and ribose were the cell-wall sugars, MK-9(H4) was the predominant menaquinone and diphosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylglycerol were present in the polar lipids. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 73.6 mol%. DNA-DNA hybridization experiments showed that the values for DNA-DNA relatedness between strain X.bu-b T and the phylogenetically closest neighbours were below 23 %. On the basis of its phenotypic properties and phylogenetic distinctiveness, strain X.bu-b T represents a novel species of the genus Cellulomonas, for which the name Cellulomonas chitinilytica sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is X.bu-b T (=KCTC 19133T =DSM 17922T).