Abstract
A Gram-positive, rod-shaped, non-spore-forming bacterium (Gsoil 1124T) was isolated from soil of a ginseng field of Pocheon province in South Korea, and was characterized in order to determine its taxonomic position. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, strain Gsoil 1124T was shown to belong to the family Nocardioidaceae and related to Nocardioides simplex (98.2 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity), Nocardioides aromaticivorans (98.1 %), Nocardioides nitrophenolicus (97.7 %) and Nocardioides kongjuensis (97.5 %). The sequence similarity with any other species with validly published names within the genus Nocardioides was less than 94.5 %. Strain Gsoil 1124T was characterized chemotaxonomically as having LL-2,6-diaminopimelic acid in the cell-wall peptidoglycan, MK-8(H4) as the predominant menaquinone and iso-C16 : 0, C18 : 0, C16 : 0, and C18 : 1ω9c as the major fatty acids. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 70.2 mol%. The chemotaxonomic properties and phenotypic characteristics supported the affiliation of strain Gsoil 1124T to the genus Nocardioides. The results of physiological and biochemical tests, and the low level of DNA–DNA relatedness allowed genotypic differentiation of strain Gsoil 1124T from recognized Nocardioides species. Therefore, strain Gsoil 1124T is considered to represent a novel species, for which the name Nocardioides ginsengisoli sp. nov. is proposed, with the type strain Gsoil 1124T (=KCTC 19135T=CCUG 52478T=DSM 17921T).