Strain KIT 00200-70066-1 T was isolated from the sputum of a patient with pulmonary disease. Cells of the strain were Gram-variable, facultatively anaerobic, motile, spore-forming rods and formed colourless to white colonies on tryptic soy agar at 30 6C and pH 7. The pathogenicity of the strain is not known. The strain contained meso-diaminopimelic acid as the diagnostic diamino acid in the cell-wall peptidoglycan, MK-7 as the predominant menaquinone, anteiso-C 15 : 0 , iso-C 16 : 0 and C 16 : 0 as the major fatty acids and diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine and several unknown lipids in the polar lipid profile. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that the isolate belongs to the genus Paenibacillus, sharing the highest levels of sequence similarity with Paenibacillus nanensis MX2-3 T , Paenibacillus agaridevorans DSM 1355 T and Paenibacillus alkaliterrae KSL-134 T (95.4, 95.2 and 94.8 %, respectively), and that it occupied a distinct position within this genus. Combined phylogenetic and phenotypic data supported the conclusion that strain KIT 00200-70066-1 T represents a novel species of the genus Paenibacillus, for which the name Paenibacillus sputi sp. nov. is proposed; the type strain is KIT 00200-70066-1 T (5KCTC 13252 T 5DSM 22699 T ).The genus Paenibacillus (type species, Paenibacillus polymyxa) was erected by Ash et al. (1993) to accommodate the so-called rRNA group 3 bacilli, comprising 11 Bacillus species, on the basis of comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis. Since then, eight more Bacillus species and one Clostridium species have been transferred to the genus, and a large number of novel species have been described; consequently, the genus contains 102 recognized species at the time of writing (Euzéby, 2009). Members of the genus Paenibacillus have been isolated from a wide variety of sources including soil, sediment, humus, the plant rhizosphere and phyllosphere, water, food, fodder, faeces, plant materials and diseased insect larvae (Daane et al., 2002). Some species have been reported from human biological samples, e.g. Paenibacillus turicensis and Paenibacillus provencensis from cerebrospinal fluid samples, Paenibacillus massiliensis, Paenibacillus sanguinis, Paenibacillus timonensis and Paenibacillus konsidensis from blood cultures and Paenibacillus urinalis from a urine sample, but they have been considered to be contaminants rather than pathogens (Bosshard et al., 2002;Roux & Raoult, 2004; Ko et al., 2008;Roux et al., 2008). Meanwhile, it has been reported that some pathogenic strains considered to belong to Paenibacills alvei and Paenibacillus macerans were isolated from patients with brain abscesses, catheter-associated infections, endophthalmitis, meningitis, prosthetic hip infections and wound infections (Antonello & Weinstein, 1989;Reboli et al., 1989;Bert et al., 1995;Barrero et al., 1996). However, they were classified based only on conventional phenotypic characterization, so their taxonomic affiliation remains uncert...