sp. nov., a novel lactic acid bacterium isolated from lychee.

A novel lactic acid bacterium, strain MB7, was isolated from lychee in Taiwan. MB7 is Gram-staining-positive, catalase-negative, non-motile, non-haemolytic, facultatively anaerobic, coccoid-shaped, heterofermentative and mainly produces d-lactic acid from glucose. Comparative analysis of 16S rRNA, and gene sequences has demonstrated that the novel strain represented a member of the genus . 16S rRNA gene sequencing results indicated that MB7 had the same sequence similarity of 99.25 % to four type strains of members of the genus : subsp. DSM 20484, subsp. DRC 1506, subsp. ATCC 8293 and DSM 20241. Additionally, high 16S rRNA sequence similarities were also observed with subsp. ATCC 19254 (99.12 %) and NRIC 1777 (98.69 %). When comparing the genomes of these type strains, the average nucleotide identity values and digital DNA-DNA hybridization values of MB7 with these type strains were 76.57-80.53 and 22.0-22.6 %, respectively. MB7 also showed different phenotypic characteristics to other most closely related species of the genus , such as carbohydrate metabolizing ability, halotolerance and growth at various pHs. On the basis of phenotypic and genotypic properties, strain MB7 represents a novel species belonging to the genus , for which the name sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is MB7 (=BCRC 81077=NBRC 113542).