Nocardioides daeguensis sp. nov., a nitratereducing bacterium isolated from activated sludge of an industrial wastewater treatment plant A Gram-reaction-positive, rod-shaped, non-spore-forming bacterium (strain 2C1-5 T ) was isolated from activated sludge of an industrial wastewater treatment plant in Daegu, South Korea. Its taxonomic position was investigated by using a polyphasic approach. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, the closest phylogenetic relatives were the type strains of Nocardioides nitrophenolicus (98.6 % similarity), N. kongjuensis (98.5 %), N. caeni (98.4 %), N. simplex (98.3 %), N. aromaticivorans (98.1 %) and N. ginsengisoli (97.5 %); the phylogenetic distance from other species with validly published names within the genus Nocardioides was greater than 3 %. Strain 2C1-5 T was characterized chemotaxonomically as having LL-2, 6-diaminopimelic acid in the cell-wall peptidoglycan, MK-8(H 4 ) as the predominant menaquinone and iso-C 16 : 0 , C 16 : 0 and C 17 : 1 v6c as the major fatty acids. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 74.9 mol%. These chemotaxonomic properties and phenotypic characteristics supported the affiliation of strain 2C1-5 T to the genus Nocardioides. The results of physiological and biochemical tests allowed genotypic and phenotypic differentiation of strain 2C1-5 T from existing species with validly published names. Therefore, strain 2C1-5 T represents a novel species of the genus Nocardioides, for which the name Nocardioides daeguensis sp. nov. is proposed, with the type strain 2C1-5 T (5JCM 17460The genus Nocardioides was proposed by Prauser (1976) with Nocardioides albus as the type species. Since then, species affiliated with the genus Nocardioides have been actively isolated and studied taxonomically. At the time of writing, the genus comprises 57 species with validly published names, including the recently described species 3These authors contributed equally to this work.