Parasutterella excrementihominis gen. nov., sp. nov., a member of the family Alcaligenaceae isolated from human faeces A novel, strictly anaerobic, non-spore-forming, Gram-negative coccobacillus (strain YIT 11859 T ) was isolated from human faeces. Biochemically, this strain was largely unreactive and was asaccharolytic. Growth of strain YIT 11859 T in peptone-yeast extract broth produced no visible turbidity, and a trace amount of propionate was detected as an end product of metabolism. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that strain YIT 11859 T was related most closely to the type strains of Sutterella species, with 90.8-88.0 % sequence similarity. Phylogenetic analysis of these and other related sequences confirmed that strain YIT 11859 T was phylogenetically most closely associated with Sutterella species, but formed a separate cluster, indicating that strain YIT 11859 T represents a novel member of the family Alcaligenaceae. Fatty acid analysis demonstrated the presence of a high concentration of C 18 : 1 v9c (75 % of the total). The main respiratory quinones were menaquinone (MK-6) and methylated menaquinone (MMK-6). The G+C content of the DNA was 49.8 mol%. These results suggest that strain YIT 11859 T represents a novel species of a new genus, for which the name Parasutterella excrementihominis gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain of Parasutterella excrementihominis is YIT 11859 T (5DSM 21040 T 5JCM 15078 T ).By using culture-independent approaches based on smallsubunit (16S and 18S) rRNA gene sequence diversity, most bacterial phylotypes identified from the human intestinal microbiota have been assigned to seven phyla, of which members of the Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes are dominant (Rajilić-Stojanović et al., 2007;Eckburg et al., 2005;Hayashi et al., 2002;Wang et al., 2003). The proteobacteria are usually secondary to the above, and members of the classes Alphaproteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, Deltaproteobacteria and Epsilonproteobacteria have been identified (Eckburg et al., 2005). With conventional culture techniques, on the other hand, species of the Proteobacteria such as Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Enterobacter cloacae and some species of Proteus and Citrobacter have been identified from the human intestinal microbiota (Finegold et al., 1974;Holdeman et al., 1976;Moore & Holdeman, 1974), and all of these species belong to the family Enterobacteriaceae, class Gammaproteobacteria, except for Sutterella parvirubra and Sutterella wadsworthensis (Wexler et al., 1996;Engberg et al., 2000), which belong to the family Alcaligenaceae, class Betaproteobacteria. This observation can be attributed, at least to some extent, to the lack of appropriate cultivation techniques.To understand better the physiological characteristics and function of the majority of the human gastrointestinal microbiota, we have performed several intensive cultivation trials aimed at isolating so-called 'unculturable' or 'asyet-uncultured' bacteria from the human gastrointestinal tr...