Nocardioides ginkgobilobae sp. nov., an endophytic actinobacterium isolated from the root of the living fossil Ginkgo biloba L. A Gram-stain-positive, aerobic and yellow actinobacterial strain, designated SYP-A7303 T , was isolated from the root of Ginkgo biloba L. Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that strain SYP-A7303 T belongs to the genus Nocardioides. The 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain SYP-A7303 T showed highest similarity to Nocardioides marinus CL-DD14 T (5JCM 15615 T ) (98.3 %) and Nocardioides aquiterrae GW-9 T (5JCM 11813 T ) (97.1 %), and less than 96.9 % to the type strains of other species of the genus Nocardioides. Strain SYP-A7303 T grew optimally at 28 8C, pH 7.0 and in the absence of NaCl. It contained LL-2,6-diaminopimelic acid in the cell-wall peptidoglycan, with mannose, ribose, rhamnose, glucose and galactose as whole-cell sugars. The polar lipids consisted of diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylinositol and an unknown lipid. The menaquinone was MK-8(H 4 ) and the predominant cellular fatty acids were iso-C 16 : 0 , C 18 : 1 v9c and C 17 : 1 v8c. The DNA G+C content was 72 mol%. Mean DNA-DNA relatedness values between strain SYP-A7303 T and the closely related strains N. marinus JCM 15615 T and N. aquiterrae JCM 11813 T were 62.5¡2.4 and 56.5¡3.5 %, respectively. Based on the morphological, physiological, biochemical and chemotaxonomic characteristics presented in this study, strain SYP-A7303 T represents a novel species of the genus Nocardioides, for which the name Nocardioides ginkgobilobae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is SYP-A7303 T (5DSM 100492 T 5KCTC 39594 T ).Prauser (1976) introduced the generic name Nocardioides for a group of Gram-positive actinobacteria that were widely distributed in soil, with Nocardioides albus as the type species. Members of the genus are characterized by the presence of LL-2,6-diaminopimelic acid (LL-DAP) in the cell wall and MK-8(H 4 ) as the major menaquinone (O'Donnell et al., 1982;Prauser, 1976; Urzì et al., 2000). The major fatty acids of species of the genus Nocardioides are diverse, with many species containing iso-C 16 : 0 , C 17 : 1 v8c or C 18 : 1 v9c and some species having C 16 : 0 , C 17 : 0 , C 15 : 0 , iso-C 15 : 0 or iso-C 17 : 0 (Cui et al., 2009; Kim et al., 2009;Lee et al., 2011;Liu et al., 2013;Yamamura et al., 2011;Zhang et al., 2009Zhang et al., , 2012. Soon after the proposal of the genus, many novel species were added, and at the time of writing the genus is represented by 78 validly described species (http://www.bacterio.net/nocardioides. html). The sources for these strains include black sand (Lee, 2007)