Abstract
A succinate-decarboxylating anaerobic bacterium, designated strain 19gly1(T), was previously isolated from a mixed culture growing with glycolate. The almost complete sequence of the 16S rRNA gene (1495 nt) was determined for this strain. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence homology, strain 19gly1(T) was identified as a member of the Sporomusa sub-branch of the 'low G+C' Gram-positive bacteria. Phylogenetic analysis showed that strain 19gly1(T) was most closely related to Succiniclasticum ruminis, Phascolarctobacterium faecium and Acidaminococcus fermentans. The use of different algorithms, such as least-squares or neighbour-joining analyses of Jukes--Cantor pairwise distances, or maximum-parsimony or maximum-likelihood analyses of the aligned sequence data, revealed that strain 19gly1(T) grouped as the most deeply branching lineage of the strain 19gly1(T)--Succiniclasticum-- Acidaminococcus--Phascolarctobacterium cluster. The phenotypic characteristics of strain 19gly1(T) distinguish it from members of the genera Succiniclasticum, Phascolarctobacterium and Acidaminococcus, and the phylogenetic distances inferred from comparative analysis of the 16S rDNA sequences suggest that strain 19gly1(T) is a representative of a new genus. Accordingly, strain 19gly1(T) (=DSM 6222(T)) is proposed as the type strain of a new species within a new genus, Succinispira mobilis gen. nov., sp. nov.