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A strictly anaerobic, Gram-stain-positive bacterium, designated FW431 T , was isolated from a mud cellar used for producing strong aromatic Chinese liquors. The strain was able to produce butanoic acid, an important component of the aroma style of Chinese liquors. Cells of strain FW431 T were straight or slightly curved rods with a polar endospore and peritrichous flagella. The major cellular fatty acids (.10 % of the total) were C 16 : 0 , C 18 : 1 v9c and C 18 : 0 . Biolog assays indicated that the strain preferably metabolizes palatinose, L-fucose, b-hydroxybutyric acid, L-rhamnose and a-ketobutyric acid among 95 carbon sources tested. FW431 T was related most closely to Clostridium ljungdahlii DSM 13528 T and Clostridium kluyveri DSM 555 T based on 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities of 95.0 and 94.2 %, respectively. The DNA G+C content of the genomic DNA was 44.4 mol%. Based on the evidence presented here, FW431 T (5CGMCC 1.5201 T 5KCTC 15519 T ) is proposed as the type strain of a novel species, Clostridium luticellarii sp. nov.The strong aroma style Chinese liquors are batch-brewed in mud cellars. During the month-long spontaneous solidstate fermentation involved, such cellars are in an anaerobic condition and contain high ethanol concentrations. The brewing process is able to accumulate diverse anaerobic and facultatively aerobic microbes (Wang et al., 2014). These adaptive micro-organisms are able to produce many low-molecular-mass organic acids, which are esterified to various esters or other volatile compounds, these determining the quality and aromatic style of the liquor (Fan & Xu, 2000;Jia, 2003;Hu et al., 2004;Xu et al., 2010;Zheng et al., 2011). Here we report the isolation and characterization of a strictly anaerobic, Gram-stain-positive bacterium, designated FW431 T , isolated from a mud cellar. 2010) agar plates. The RCM had the following composition (per litre): 5 g glucose, 10 g tryptone, 3 g yeast extract, 5 g beef extract, 1 g soluble starch, 5 g NaCl, 3 g sodium acetate, 5 g L-cystine, 1 mg resazurin and 1.5 % agar. The pH was adjusted to 6.5 before autoclaving. The plates were incubated at 37 8C in an anaerobic system (MART Microbiology) filled with a gas mixture of N 2 /H 2 /CO 2 (8 : 1 : 1). The strain was picked as a single colony and further purified by transferring to fresh RCM agar plates several times. The purified strain was stored under liquid nitrogen in tubes containing 20 % glycerol solution.The 16S rRNA gene sequence was amplified from FW431 T using the method described by Wang et al. (2014). The sequence determined was 1441 bp long. A BLAST search of the 16S rRNA gene sequence against the GenBank database showed that the strain shared highest similarity with Clostridium ljungdahlii DSM 13528 T and Clostridium kluyveri DSM 555 T (95.0 and 94.2 %, respectively). Accordingly, further taxonomic identification was performed with these two reference strains, purchased from the Deutsche Sammlung von Micro-organismen und Zellkulturen GmbH (DSMZ, Braunschweig, German). The Clostridi...