A Gram-negative, rod-shaped, non-spore-forming bacterial strain, designated LMG 2337 T , was isolated from the blood of a patient with endocarditis and characterized. The strain was affiliated with the alphaproteobacterial genus Brevundimonas, with Brevundimonas diminuta LMG 2089 T (98.3 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity) and Brevundimonas terrae KSL-145 T (97.5 %) as its closest relatives. This affiliation was supported by chemotaxonomic data: the G+C content was 66.3 mol %, the major polar lipids were phosphatidyl diacylglycerol, sulfoquinovosyl diacylglycerol and phosphatidyl glucopyranosyl diacylglycerol and the major fatty acids were summed feature 7 (one or more of C 18 : 1 v7c, C 18 : 1 v9t and C 18 : 1 v12t) and C 16 : 0 . Strain LMG 2337 T displayed an unusually broad substrate spectrum. The results from DNA-DNA hybridization and physiological and biochemical tests allowed the genotypic and phenotypic differentiation of strain LMG 2337 T from all of the type strains of hitherto-describedBrevundimonas species. The strain therefore represents a novel species, for which the name Brevundimonas vancanneytii sp. nov. is proposed, with type strain LMG 2337 T (5CCUG 1797The genus Brevundimonas was proposed by Segers et al. (1994) to harbour strains previously assigned to Pseudomonas diminuta and Pseudomonas vesicularis. At that time, Brevundimonas included only species that form short rods that are motile by means of one polar flagellum with a short wavelength. This changed when caulobacteria from a broad range of freshwater, brackish water, marine and soil habitats were studied using a polyphasic approach (Anast & Smit, 1988;MacRae & Smit, 1991;Segers et al., 1994). The descriptions of the genera Caulobacter and Brevundimonas were emended and a number of Caulobacter species were transferred to the genus Brevundimonas . Today, Brevundimonas species are differentiated from Caulobacter mainly by the lack of loop 46 in the V8 region of the 16S rRNA gene (Abraham et al., 2008), the presence of C 12 : 0 3-OH, the glycophospholipid composition and higher salt tolerances. We report here on a novel species within the genus Brevundimonas that was isolated from blood of a patient with endocarditis and preliminarily identified as belonging to Brevundimonas diminuta .The reference strains for this study were obtained from the ATCC, DSMZ and LMG culture collections. The strains were grown in the freshwater Caulobacter medium PYEM [per litre MQ-water (Biocel A 10; Millipore): 2 g peptone, 2 g yeast extract, 0.5 g NH 4 Cl]. After autoclaving and cooling, 5 ml filter-sterilized 0.2 mg riboflavin ml
21, 2 ml 50 % glucose, 1 ml 20 % MgSO 4 and 1 ml 10 % CaCl 2 (all sterilized) were added. The strains were grown in 2 l flasks at 30 u C with shaking at 100 r.p.m. and biomass was harvested in the late exponential phase after 72 h.