Abstract

A xylan-degrading bacterium, designated as MS5T strain, was isolated from soil collected from the Jeju Island, Republic of Korea. Strain MS5T was Gram-stain-positive, aerobic, and motile by polar flagellum. The major fatty acids identified in this bacterium were iso-C15:0 (32.3%), C16:0 (27.3%), and anteiso-C15:0 (10.2%). A similarity search based on the 16S rRNA gene sequence revealed that the strain belongs to the class Bacilli and shared the highest similarity with the type strains Bacillus beringensis BR035T (98.7%) and Bacillus korlensis ZLC-26T (98.6%) which form a coherent cluster in a neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree. The DNA G+C content of strain MS5T was 43.0 mol%. The major menaquinone was MK-7 and the diagnostic diamino acid in the cell-wall peptidoglycan was meso-diaminopimelic acid. The DNADNA relatedness values between strain MS5T and two closely related species, B. beringensis BR035T and B. korlensis ZLC- 26T, were less than 70%. DNA-DNA relatedness analysis and 16S rRNA sequence similarity, as well as phenotypic and chemotaxonomic characteristics suggest that the strain MS5T constitutes a novel Bacillus species, for which the name Bacillus coreaensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is MS5T (=DSM25506T =KCTC13895T).

• Keywords: xylanase; Bacillus coreaensis; DSM25506; KCTC13895