Lactobacillus panisapium sp. nov., from honeybee Apis cerana bee bread.

A novel facultatively anaerobic, Gram-stain-positive, non-motile, non-spore-forming, catalase-negative bacterium of the genus Lactobacillus, designated strain Bb 2-3, was isolated from bee bread of Apis cerana collected from a hive in Kunming, China. The strain was regular rod-shaped. Optimal growth occurred at 37 °C, pH 6.5 with 5.0 g l NaCl. The predominant fatty acids were C18 : 1ω9c, C16 : 0 and C19 : 0 iso. Respiratory quinones were not detected. Seven glycolipids, three lipids, phosphatidylglycerol and diphosphatidylglycerol were detected. The peptidoglycan type A4α l-Lys-d-Asp was determined. Strain Bb 2-3 was closely related to Lactobacillus bombicola DSM 28793, Lactobacillus apis LMG 26964 and Lactobacillus helsingborgensis DSM 26265, with 97.8, 97.6 and 97.0 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, respectively. A comparison of two housekeeping genes, rpoA and pheS, revealed that strain Bb 2-3 was well separated from the reference strains of species of the genus Lactobacillus. The average nucleotide identity between strain Bb 2-3 and the type strains of closely related species was lower than the 95-96 % threshold value for delineation of genomic prokaryotic species. The G+C content of the genomic DNA of strain Bb 2-3 was 37.4 mol%. On the basis of phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic analyses, strain Bb 2-3 is proposed to represent a novel species of the genus Lactobacillus, for which we propose the name Lactobacillus panisapium sp. nov. The type strain is Bb 2-3 (=DSM 102188=ACCC 19955).