Abstract

A Gram-positive, rod-shaped, non-spore-forming bacterium (Gsoil 485T) was isolated from the soil of a ginseng field located in Pocheon province in South Korea. This bacterium was characterized in order to determine its taxonomic position by using the polyphasic approach. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, strain Gsoil 485T was shown to belong to the family Nocardioidaceae and related to Nocardioides koreensis (96.8% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity), Nocardioides basaltis (96.7%), Nocardioides salarius (96.7%), and Nocardioides sediminis (96.5%). The sequence similarity with other species that had validly published names within the genus Nocardioides was less than 96.4%. Strain Gsoil 485T was characterized chemotaxonomically as having LL-2,6-diaminopimelic acid in a cell-wall peptidoglycan, MK-8(H4) as the predominant menaquinone, and iso-C16:0, C18:1 ω9c as the major fatty acids. The G+C content of genomic DNA was 71.6 mol%. The chemotaxonomic properties and phenotypic characteristics supported the affiliation of strain Gsoil 485T to the genus Nocardioides. The results of both physiological and biochemical tests allowed for genotypic differentiation of strain Gsoil 485T from the recognized Nocardioides species. Therefore, strain Gsoil 485T is considered to represent the novel species, for which the name Nocardioides ginsengisegetis sp. nov. is proposed, with the type strain Gsoil 485T (KACC 14269T =KCTC 19469T =DSM 21349T).

• Keywords: 16S rRNA gene; polyphasic taxonomy; N. ginsengisegetis