Paenibacillus Zeae Sp. Nov., Isolated from Maize (zea Mays L.) Seeds

A novel yellow-pigmented, aerobic, rod-shaped, non-motile bacterium, designated strain CCMF41T, was isolated from rhizosphere soil of maize (Zea mays) collected in Wufeng District, Taichung, Taiwan. Strain CC-MF41T exhibited 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity of 97.5, 97.3, 97.2 and 97.1% to Leucobacter chironomi MM2LBT (and ‘Leucobacter kyeonggiensis’F3-P9 and ‘L. humi’ Re-6, the names of which have not been validly published), Leucobactertardus K70/01T, L. komagatae IFO 15245T and ‘Leucobacter margaritiformis’ A23. However,CC-MF41T and ‘L. margaritiformis’ A23 formed a loosely bound phylogenetic lineage (with alow bootstrap value) associated with species of the genus Leucobacter. In DNA–DNA reassociation experiments, the relatedness of strain CC-MF41T to L. chironomi DSM 19883T was 57.1% (reciprocal value 29.1 %). The DNA G+C content of strain CC-MF41T was 72.1 mol% and the cell-wall peptidoglycan contained 2,4-diaminobutyric acid, alanine, glycine,glutamic acid and threonine. The major menaquinone was MK-11 and the predominant fatty acids were iso-C16 : 0, anteiso-C15 : 0 and anteiso-C17 : 0. The polar lipid profile of strain CCMF41T contained major amounts of diphosphatidylglycerol followed by an unidentified glycolipid, phosphatidylglycerol and an unknown phospholipid. Based on its phylogenetic,phenotypic and chemotaxonomic distinctiveness, strain CC-MF41T represents a novel species of Leucobacter, for which the name Leucobacter zeae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain isCC-MF41T (=BCRC 80515T=LMG 27265T).