Bacillus silvestris sp. nov., a new member of the genus Bacillus that contains lysine in its cell wall

Abstract

A Gram-positive, aerobic, rod-shaped, peritrichously flagellated, roundendospore-forming bacterium was isolated from a forest soil near Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany, and designated strain HR3-23T (T = type strain). Morphologically, strain HR3-23T shows the characteristics of a member of the genus Bacillus. The spore position is terminal in a swollen sporangium. Comparative analysis of the 165 rDNA sequence shows strain HR3-23l to be most closely related to Caryophanon fenue (95.8% 165 rRNA similarity) and to Bacillus sphaericus (954% 165 rRNA similarity). Phylogenetically, the isolate clusters among species of Bacillus RNA group 2. The DNA G+C content of isolate HR3-23T is 39.3 mol%, the peptidoglycan type is A4a (L-LYS-D-Glu), the major respiratory lipoquinone is menaquinone MK-7 and the predominant fatty acid is of the i so-C,,:, type. Based on the morphological, chemotaxonomic, physiological and phylogenetic properties, a new species, Bacillus silvestris, is proposed; strain HR3-23l is the type strain (= DSM 122233.

Re-examination of the taxonomic position of Bacillus silvestris Rheims et al. 1999 and proposal to transfer it to Solibacillus gen. nov. as Solibacillus silvestris comb. nov.

“…Bacillus rRNA group 2 comprises six Bacillus species: Bacillus fusiformis, Bacillus globisporus, Bacillus insolitus, Bacillus pasteurii, Bacillus psychrophilus and Bacillus sphaericus, and also the nonBacillus species Sporosarcina ureae. An increasing number of species descriptions indicated the need to properly define the properties of the genus Bacillus (Farrow et al, 1994;Rheims et al, 1999;Stackebrandt & Swiderski, 2002;Kämpfer et al, 2006;Zhang et al, 2007) and according to Farrow et al (1994) the 'simplest and most phylogenetically consistent policy would be to exclude the group 2 bacilli from the genus Bacillus'. The same authors also suggested the transfer of B. globisporus, B. pasteurii and B.…”

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Re-examination of the taxonomic position of Bacillus silvestris Rheims et al 1999 Following the transfer of three of the six species enclosed in the original definition of rRNA group 2 of Bacillus to the genus Sporosarcina and two to Lysinibacillus, other species of this group, some of which were added later, still await taxonomic revision. In a recent publication, a set of 'core' characteristics was proposed for species to be included in the genus Bacillus (Kä mpfer et al, 2006).

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“…Five of the six species originally placed in Bacillus rRNA group 2 were excluded from this genus and reclassified as members of existing or new genera. In parallel to the exclusion of certain species, several new species were affiliated to this group [Bacillus silvestris (Rheims et al, 1999); Bacillus pycnus and B. neidei (Nakamura et al, 2002); Bacillus psychrodurans and Bacillus psychrotolerans (Abd ElRahman et al, 2002); Bacillus odysseyi (La Duc et al, 2004); B. arvi and B. arenosi (Heyrman et al, 2005); Bacillus massiliensis (Glazunova et al, 2006); Bacillus decisifrondis (Zhang et al, 2007)]. In order to clarify the taxonomic situation within the genera Bacillus and Paenibacillus, Kämpfer et al (2006) strongly recommended the inclusion of polar lipid pattern, menaquinone type and fatty acid profiles as important criteria for making taxonomic conclusions.…”

“…The topology of the neighbour joining tree agreed with that generated by maximum-parsimony method, but differed slightly in the branching point of the lineage embracing Filibacter limicola and Sporosarcina ureae when the maximum-likelihood method was used. In all trees B. silvestris appeared as a sister clade of the Caryophanon lineage, a situation already depicted in the original description of B. silvestris (Rheims et al, 1999). Pairwise sequence similarities were calculated using the BioEdit software package (Hall, 1999).…”

Jannaschia helgolandensis gen. nov., sp. nov., a novel abundant member of the marine Roseobacter clade from the North Sea

“…Cell morphology was investigated using slides covered with 2 % (w/v) agar (dissolved in water). Transmission electron microscope investigations were carried out as described previously (Rheims et al, 1999).…”