The taxonomic position of a novel Gram-negative strain, designated SY1 T , isolated from a farmsoil sample obtained from Jiangsu Province, PR China, was characterized by using a polyphasic approach. The cells were non-motile, non-spore-forming rods. The organism grew optimally at 30-37 6C and at pH 6.0-8.0. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strain SY1T is a member of the genus Sphingobacterium; Sphingobacterium multivorum JCM 21156 T was the nearest relative (98.5 % sequence similarity). The predominant fatty acids of strain SY1 T were iso-

The genus Serratia belongs to the family Enterobacteriaceae of the class Gammaproteobacteria. Some members of the genus Serratia have clinical importance (Grimont & Grimont, 1992;Brenner, 1984) and other members produce pigments identified as prodigiosin (Hearn et al., 1970;Gerber, 1975). A subspecies of Serratia marcescens (S. marcescens subsp. sakuensis) and a urea-dissolving species (Serratia ureilytica) have been described previously by Ajithkumar et al. (2003) and Bhadra et al. (2005), respectively. In this paper, a red-pigmented, non-sporeforming, fluorescent strain, designated DZ0503SBS1 T , was isolated from the intestine of the nematode Heterorhabditidoides chongmingensis (Zhang et al., 2008).The novel strain was associated symbiotically with the entomopathogenic nematode H. chongmingensis (Rhabdi3These authors contributed equally to this work.The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain DZ0503SBS1 T is EU036987.A neighbour-joining phylogenetic tree based on partial rpoB gene sequences, a fluorescence micrograph showing the location of strain DZ0503SBS1 T in the intestine of the nematode Heterorhabditidoides chongmingensis, a transmission electron micrograph of strain DZ0503SBS1 T , cellular fatty acid composition data and similarity coefficient values of strain DZ0503SBS1T and related taxa are available with the online version of this paper.

A novel strain, D3T , isolated from a field-soil sample obtained from Anhui Province, PR China, was characterized taxonomically by using a polyphasic approach. The cells were Gram-negative, yellow-pigmented rods devoid of flagella, but showing gliding motility. The organism was able to grow at 5-37 6C and at pH 4.0-10.0. A comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that strain D3 T is a member of the genus Flavobacterium, sharing highest sequence similarity with the type strain of Flavobacterium defluvii (96.7 %). The major isoprenoid quinone was MK-6 and the predominant fatty acids were iso-C 15 : 0 , summed feature 3 (C 16 : 1 v7c and/or iso-C 15 : 0 2-OH) and C 16 : 0 . The DNA G+C content was 31.4 mol%. On the basis of phylogenetic and phenotypic data, strain D3 T represents a novel species within the genus Flavobacterium, for which the name Flavobacterium anhuiense sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is D3 T (5KCTC 22128 T 5CGMCC 1.6859The genus Flavobacterium (Bergey et al., 1923) was emended by Bernardet et al. (1996) to include Gram-negative, aerobic, predominantly gliding, yellow-pigmented bacteria with DNA G+C contents in the range 32-37 mol% and MK-6 as the major respiratory quinone. Flavobacterium is the type genus of the family Flavobacteriaceae, phylum Bacteroidetes (previously, the Cytophaga-Flavobacterium-Bacteroides group) (Ludwig & Klenk, 2001;Bernardet et al., 2002). Flavobacterium strains occur in soil, fresh water and marine habitats. Many species are cold-adapted, whilst others are pathogenic to freshwater fish (Bernardet & Bowman, 2006 et al., 2007).A yellow-pigmented bacterial strain, designated D3 T , was isolated from a field-soil sample from Anhui Province, PR China. Strain D3 T was isolated by using the dilution-plating technique on Luria-Bertani (LB) agar (l 21: 5 g yeast extract, 10 g tryptone, 10 g NaCl; pH 7.0) incubated at 30 uC and was cultivated routinely in LB agar or in LB broth at the same temperature.The primers used for PCR amplification of the 16S rRNA gene were 59-AGAGTTTGATCCTGGCTCAG-39 (forward) and 59-AAGGAGGTGATCCAAGCCGCA-39 (reverse), corresponding to positions 8-27 and 1521-1540, respectively, in the 16S rRNA gene sequence of Escherichia coli (Brosius et al., 1978). The 1398 bp sequence of strain D3 T was compared with available sequences retrieved from GenBank by using the BLAST program (http:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/) to determine an approximate phylogenetic affiliation. A phylogenetic analysis was performed by using the software packages PHYLIP (Felsenstein, 1993) and MEGA, version 3.1 (Kumar et al., 2001), after multiple alignment of the data by CLUSTAL_X (Thompson et al., 1997). Distances (with distance options according to the Kimura two-parameter model; Kimura, 1980Kimura, , 1983 and clustering were based on the neighbourjoining (Saitou & Nei, 1987) and maximum-likelihood (Felsenstein, 1981) methods. Bootstrap analysis (1000 replications) was used to evaluate the topology of the neighbour-joining tree (Felsenstein, 1985). This tree (Fig. ...

A Gram-negative, rod-shaped, non-motile, non-spore-forming bacterium, designated strain HR2 T , was isolated from a soil sample from the Taklimaken Desert in Xinjiang Province, China. Strain HR2T grew optimally at pH 7.0-8.0 and 30-37 6C in the presence of 0-1 % (w/v) NaCl. An analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that strain HR2 T fell within the radiation of the genus Pseudomonas, the highest level of similarity being found with respect to Pseudomonas luteola IAM 13000 T (97.5 %); the levels of sequence similarity with respect to other recognized Pseudomonas species were ,96.4 %. DNA-DNA hybridization showed that the genetic relatedness between strain HR2 T and P. luteola IAM 13000 T was 53.2 %. The G+C content of the genomic DNA of strain HR2 T was 55.2 mol%. The major fatty acids were 18 : 1, summed feature 3 and 16 : 0. The hydroxylated fatty acids 10 : 0 3-OH, 12 : 0 3-OH and 12 : 0 2-OH were also present. The data obtained in this polyphasic study indicated that this isolate represents a novel species of the genus Pseudomonas, for which the name Pseudomonas duriflava sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is HR2 T (5KCTC 22129 T 5CGMCC 1.6858 T ).The genus Pseudomonas sensu stricto originally comprised only species belonging to Pseudomonas RNA homology group I (Palleroni, 1984) in the Gammaproteobacteria (Kersters et al., 1996). However, the genus was subdivided into two main intrageneric clusters (as reviewed by Anzai et al., 2000): the first cluster comprised six groups and the second had only one group. Pseudomonads are abundant in various environments, such as water, air and soil. In our search for organisms capable of growing in desert ecosystems, a bacterial strain, designated HR2 T , was isolated and analysed using polyphasic taxonomy. An analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities indicated that the isolate was closely related to the Pseudomonas aeruginosa/Pseudomonas stutzeri group within the first cluster and formed a distinct line. On the basis of phenotypic and genotypic evidence, it is proposed that strain HR2T represents a novel species of the genus Pseudomonas. Strain HR2T was isolated from a desert soil sample by using the usual dilution plating technique on Luria-Bertani (LB) agar (l 21: 5 g yeast extract, 10 g tryptone, 10 g NaCl, pH 7.0) incubated for 2 days at 30 u C under aerobic conditions. The isolate was cultivated routinely on LB agar or in LB broth at the same temperature. The strain was maintained in a glycerol suspension (20 %, v/v) at 270 u C.Amplification and sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene were performed according to a method described by Cui et al. (2001), but which was modified slightly by us: the primers used for the PCR amplification were 59-AGAGTTTGATCCTGGCTCAG-39 (forward) and 59-AAGGAGGTGATCCAAGCCGCA-39 (reverse), corresponding to positions 8-27 and 1521-1540, respectively, in the 16S rRNA sequence of Escherichia coli (Brosius et al., 1978). The resultant sequence (1404 bp) of strain HR2 T was compared with sequences available from the GenBank database, us...

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