Bacillus manliponensis sp. nov., a new member of the Bacillus cereus group isolated from foreshore tidal flat sediment

A Gram-positive, endospore-forming, new Bacillus species, strain BL4-6^T, was isolated from tidal flat sediment of the Yellow Sea. Strain BL4-6^T is a straight rod, with motility by peritrichate flagella. The cell wall contains meso-diaminopimelic acid, and the major respiratory quinone is menaquinone-7. The major fatty acids are iso-C_15:0 and summed feature 3 (containing C_16:1 ω7c/iso-C_15:0 2OH, and/or iso-C_15:0 2OH/C_16:1 ω7c). Cells are catalase-positive and oxidase-negative. The G+C content of the genomic DNA is 38.0 mol%. Based on a comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, the isolate belongs to the genus Bacillus, forms a clade with the Bacillus cereus group, and is closely related to Bacillus mycoides (98.5%), Bacillus cereus (98.5%), Bacillus anthracis (98.4%), Bacillus thuringiensis (98.4%), Bacillus weihenstephanensis (98.1%), and Bacillus pseudomycoides (97.5%). The isolate showed less than 85% similarity of the gyrA gene sequence and below 95% similarity of the rpoB gene sequence to the members of this group. DNA-DNA relatedness between strain BL4-6^T and B. cereus group was found to be in a range of 22.8–42.3%, and thus BL4-6^T represents a unique species. On the basis of these studies, strain BL4-6^T (=KCTC 13319^T =JCM 15802^T) is proposed to represent the type strain of a novel species, Bacillus manliponensis sp. nov.