Paenibacillus aurantiacus sp. nov., isolated from ant nest soil.

A Gram-stain-positive, rod-shaped and endospore-forming bacterium, strain RC11T, isolated from ant nest soil collected from Udon Thani Province, Thailand was characterized in a taxonomic study based on a polyphasic approach. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strain RC11T was affiliated to the genus Paenibacillus and was closely related to Paenibacillus phyllosphaerae LMG 22192T with 98.1 % sequence similarity. Strain RC11T contained meso-diaminopimelic in the cell-wall peptidoglycan. The major menaquinone was MK-7. Anteiso-C15 : 0, iso-C16 : 0, anteiso-C17 : 0 and C16 : 0 were the predominant cellular fatty acids. Diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylglycerol were the major polar lipids. The DNA G+C content was 57.9 mol%. In addition, strain RC11T and P. phyllosphaerae LMG 22192T showed a low level of DNA-DNA relatedness (15.6-33.2 %). Therefore, strain RC11T represents a novel species of the genus Paenibacillus, for which the name Paenibacillus aurantiacus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is RC11T (=KCTC 33816T=LMG 29659T=TISTR 2452T).