Oceanobacillus luteolus sp. nov., isolated from soil.

Two Gram-stain-positive, rod-shaped and endospore-forming bacteria, designated WM-1T and WM-4, were isolated from a paddy soil and a forest soil, respectively, in South China. Comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses showed that both strains were members of the genus Oceanobacillus and most closely related to Oceanobacillus chironomi LMG 23627T with pairwise sequence similarity of 96.0%. The isolates contained menaquinone-7 (MK-7) as the respiratory quinone and anteiso-C15:0, anteiso-C17:0 and iso-C15:0 as the major fatty acids (>10%). Polar lipids consisted of a predominance of diphosphatidylglycerol and moderate to minor amounts of phosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylinositol. The cell-wall peptidoglycan contained meso-diaminopimelic acid. The DNA G+C content was 38.6-39.2 mol%. The 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain WM-1T displayed 99.7 % similarity to that of strain WM-4, and DNA-DNA hybridization between the two strains showed a relatedness value of 91 %. Based on the results of this polyphasic study, strains WM-1T and WM-4 represent a novel species in the genus Oceanobacillus, for which the name Oceanobacillus luteolus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is WM-1T (=KCTC 33119T=CGMCC 1.12406T).