Oceanobacillus soja sp nov isolated from soy sauce production equipment in Japan

A Gram-positive, spore-forming, motile rod-shaped bacterium, designated strain Y27(T), was isolated from the bottom of a mold fermenter used in the process of soy sauce production. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence from this strain placed it within the genus Oceanobacillus, and further sequence analysis revealed that this strain has a sequence similarity of 95.0-98.7% to other known species of Oceanobacillus. The DNA-DNA relatedness between strain Y27(T) and related type strains of the genus Oceanobacillus is below 43%, indicating that it should be considered a separate species. Characterization of strain Y27(T) revealed that the major cellular fatty acid is anteiso-C-15:0, the cell wall contains meso-diaminopimelic acid-type peptido-glycans, the major menaquinone is MK-7, and the major polar lipids are diphosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylglycerol. The genomic DNA G+C content of the strain is 38.0 mol%. On the basis of these phylogenetic, physiological and chemotaxonomic data, we propose that this isolate represents a novel species of the genus Oceanobacillus, and propose the name Oceanobacillus soja sp. nov. The type strain is strain Y27(T) (=JCM 15792(T)=NRRL B-59181(T)=NBRC 105379(T)=NCIMB 14542(T)).