Pueribacillus theae gen. nov., sp. nov., isolated from Pu'er tea.

A novel bacterial strain, designated T8, isolated from ripened Pu'er tea, was investigated by using a polyphasic taxonomic approach. Cells stained Gram-positive and were aerobic, sporogenous and rod-shaped with flagella. Phylogenetic analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed the strain belonged to the family Bacillaceae in the class Bacilli and represented an independent taxon separated from other genera. Strain T8 shared low levels of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity (<94 %) to members of other genera in the family Bacillaceae and was most closely related to Bacillus composti SgZ-9 (93.3 % sequence similarity). The DNA G+C content of strain T8 was 40 mol%. The major fatty acids (>10 %) of strain T8 were iso-C15 : 0 and iso-C16 : 0. The strain had a cell-wall type A1γ peptidoglycan with meso-diaminopimelic acid as the diagnostic diamino acid. MK-7 (62 %), MK-6 (31 %) and MK-8 (7 %) were detected as the isoprenoid quinones. The predominant polar lipids were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylmethylethanolamine and six unidentified phospholipids. On the basis of the polyphasic evidence presented, strain T8 is considered to represent a novel genus and species in the family Bacillaceae, for which we propose the name Pueribacillus theae gen. nov., sp. nov. The type strain is T8 (=CGMCC 1.15924=KCTC 333888).