Lactobacillus gigeriorum sp. nov., isolated from chicken crop

In the early 1980s, a facultatively anaerobic, non-motile, short rod, designated 202T, was isolated from a chicken crop and identified as a homofermentative lactic acid bacterium. Phylogenetic analysis based on the 16S rRNA gene sequence revealed that the strain was affiliated with the genus Lactobacillus, clustering within the Lactobacillus acidophilus–delbrueckii group. In this analysis, strain 202T appeared to be most closely related to the type strains of Lactobacillus intestinalis and Lactobacillus amylolyticus, with gene sequence similarities of 96.1 and 96.2 %, respectively. Strain 202T was found to differ from these two species, however, when investigated by multilocus sequence analysis, and it also differed in terms of some of its metabolic properties. On the basis of these observations, strain 202T is considered to represent a novel species in the genus Lactobacillus, for which the name Lactobacillus gigeriorum sp. nov. is proposed; the type strain is 202T ( = CRBIP 24.85T = DSM 23908T).