[Studies on the classification of thermophilic actinomycetes. IV. Determination of thermophilic Streptomyces hygroscopicus group].

The thermophilic streptomyces hygroscopicus is one of the pathogens of farmer's lung disease. The identified 60 strains of thermophilic streptomyces hygroscopicus coming from the isolates from the haystack, moldy hay and sputa collected from Jiangsu, Hubei province and Shanghai in China. These strains are grown around 50 degrees C and have moist patches on the surface of colonies. It is proved that protease can be extracted from cultured H9-4 strain. This protease is provided with antigen, the farmer's lung disease of rabbit can be induced in animals experiments. On clinical diagnosis the farmer's lung disease can be detected by sera test. From the identification of the 60 thermophilic streptomyces hygroscopicus strains, we found the morphological cultural, physiological characteristics and cell wall composition of H9-4 and T562 well different from description hitherto. So two of them are identified as new species. H9-4 is named as Streptomyces thermoendus sp. nov. and T562 is named as Streptomyces thermobicorno-hygroscopicus sp. nov.