Clostridium fermenticellae sp. nov., isolated from the mud in a fermentation cellar for the production of the Chinese liquor, baijiu

A novel Gram-stain-positive, rod-shaped, obligately anaerobic, non-motile, spore-forming and binary fission encapsulated bacterium, designated strain JN500901 T , was isolated from a mud cellar which has been continuously used for the fermentation of Chinese strong-flavour baijiu for over 100 years. Growth of JN500901 T occurred at pH 4.5-8.0 (optimum, pH 5.0), 20-40 °C (37 °C), 0-2 % (w/v) NaCl and 0-10 % (v/v) ethanol. The Biolog assay revealed that strain JN500901 T metabolized d-fructose, l-fucose, isomaltulose and l-rhamnose among the 95 studied carbon sources. p-Cresol was the predominant volatile metabolite in the fermentation broth of strain JN500901 T incubated in liquid reinforced clostridial medium under anaerobic conditions. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain JN500901 T belongs to Clostridiumsensu stricto, and shared the highest sequence similarity to Clostridiumcarboxidivorans DSM 15243 T (94.2 %), followed by Clostridiumscatologenes DSM 757 T (94.1 %). The dominant cellular fatty acids (>10 %) were C16 : 0 FAME (36.6 %), C19 : 0 cyc 9,10 DMA (19.8 %) and C16 : 1 cis 9 DMA (11.8 %). The complete genome of strain JN500901 T contained a circular chromosome of 2.812 Mb with 2611 genes and 31.0 mol% G+C content. Comparative genome analysis of the strain JN500901 T , Clostridiumcarboxidivorans DSM 15243 T and Clostridiumscatologenes DSM 757 T revealed 74.5 and 74.8 % average nucleotide identity, respectively. Based on the phenotypic, biochemical and phylogenetic analyses presented here, strain JN500901 T is considered to be a novel species of the genus Clostridiumsensustricto, for which the name Clostridium fermenticellae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is JN500901 T (=CICC 24501 T =JCM 32827 T ).