Paenibacillus luteus sp. nov., isolated from soil.

A novel Gram-stain-positive, strictly aerobic, motile, spore-forming and rod-shaped bacterial strain, designated R-3, was isolated from a soil sample obtained from the shore of Lake Panyang, Sichuan Province, PR China. Strain R-3 hydrolysed starch and casein. It could not assimilate d-glucose as a carbon source, or produce acid from d-glucose and l-arabinose. Phylogenetic, phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and molecular studies were performed on the new isolate. Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain R-3 was a member of the genus Paenibacillus, exhibiting the highest sequence similarity to Paenibacillus sinopodophylli TEGR-3 (98.4 %). The organism grew at 4-38 °C (optimum, 28-30 °C), at pH 6.0-10.0 (pH 7.0-7.5) and with 0-2.5 % (w/v) NaCl (1 %). The predominant menaquinone was MK-7. Anteiso-C15 : 0 (60.7 %) and C16 : 0 (15.5 %) were the major fatty acids. The cellular polar lipids contained diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, three unidentified aminophospholipids and one unidentified phospholipid. The DNA G+C content of strain R-3 was determined to be 47.0 mol%. The DNA-DNA relatedness between strain R-3 and P. sinopodophylli TEGR-3 was 21.2 %. Based on the results obtained in this study, strain R-3 is considered to represent a novel species of the genus Paenibacillus, for which the name Paenibacillusluteus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is R-3 (=CGMCC 1.16135=KCTC 33912).