Nocardioides, a New Genus of the Order Actinomycetales

Abstract

The properties of 17 strains of a nocardioform actinomycete isolated from soil are described. The hyphae of the primary mycelium of this organism fragment into irregular to rod-to coccus-like elements. The hyphae of the aerial mycelium fragment into rod-to coccus-like elements with smooth surfaces. These elements give rise to new mycelia. The organism is a gram-positive, non-acid-fast, aerobic, mesophile, and it has a cell wall composition of type I (u-diaminopimelic acid, alanine, glutamic acid, glycine). The deoxyribonucleic acid base composition is 66.5 mol% G+C. The actinomycete is susceptible to phages of a taxon-specific set. Polyvalent Nocardia and Streptomyces phages are not propagated in the nocardioform organism, which is here regarded as belonging to a new genus, Nocardioides, the type species of which is N . albus. The type strain o f N . albus is IMET 7807 (Culture Collection of the Zentralinstitut fur Microbiologie und experimentelle Therapie, Jena). It has been deposited in the American Type Culture Collection under the number 27980. The new genus is placed in the family Streptomycetaceae.In a paper presented at a symposium on Noeardia held during the 10th International Association of Microbiological Societies Congress at Mexico City in 1970, Prauser introduced the generic name Nocardioides, with type species N . albus, for an organism which, although widely distributed in soil, could not be identified with any other organism known at the time. The main characters were reported, and cultures of the organism were subsequently sent to a number of specialists for study with the hope that a suitable taxonomic niche could be found for this nocardioform actinomycete. Lechevalier et al. (6) included Nocardioides in their key to the genera of the actinomycetes, and subsequently Prauser received requests to effect the valid publication of names for the genus and its type species, Nocardioides and N . albus not having been previously validly published. It is the intent of this paper to satisfy these requests. Two Arthrobacter strains were also studied: Arthrobacter simplex NCIB 8929 and a strain of this species received under the name Arthrobacter globiformis from the Science Service, Bacteriology Division, Ottawa, Canada (its number in our collection is IMET SG 1020).Phages. The phages used were those isolated by Prauser and Falta (20); Streptomyces phages S5, S6, S7, and S8, phages X5 and X6, Nocardia phages N6, N7, N8, and N9, Oerskoviu phage 0 4 , Promicromonosporu phage P3, and Micromonosporu phages Mm3 and Mm4, all isolated from soil by the author (19), were also included in this study.Media. Cultures of the strains studied were isolated from soil by use of the agar double-layer method, in which dilutions of soil suspensions are mixed in the melted agar used for the upper layer. The isolation media were those commonly used, such as inorganic salts-starch agar (3) and arginineglycerol-salt agar (2). Another medium used was one found suitable for the isolation of many actinomycetes, namely: oatmeal, 3....

Jiangella gansuensis gen. nov., sp. nov., a novel actinomycete from a desert soil in north-west China

“…Prauser (1976), O'Donnell et al (1982), Collins et al (1989), Miller et al (1991), Urzì et al (2000); Park et al (1999), Wang et al (2001) and Sohn et al (2003). ND, Not determined.…”

“…Collins et al (1989 transferred the Pimelobacter species to the genera Terrabacter and Nocardioides. Currently, the family Nocardioidaceae comprises five genera: Nocardioides (Prauser, 1976), Aeromicrobium (Miller et al, 1991), Kribbella (Park et al, 1999;Sohn et al, 2003), Marmoricola (Urzì et al, 2000) and Actinopolymorpha (Wang et al, 2001). During a project to screen bioactive actinomycete strains from soils, one actinomycete strain, designated YIM 002 T , was isolated from a desert soil sample collected in Sunan county, Gansu Province, north-west China.…”

Application of multiplex PCR using species-specific primers within the 16S rRNA gene for rapid identification of Nocardioides strains

“…976) for nocardioform actinomycetes that form a There are currently five validly described Nocardioides which into rod-to species, namely Nocardioides albus (Prauser, 1976), Nocardioides luteus (Prauser,I984), Nocardioides jensenii Suzuki & Komagata, 1983, Nocardioides plantarum (Collins et 1994) and cardioides fastidiosa was proposed by Collins & Stackebrandt ( 989) but was recently transferred to the genus Aeromicrobium as A . fastidiosum by Tamura coccus-like elements.…”

“…The major fatty acid characterizing the genus is iso-C,, : (Miller et al, 199 1 ;O'Donnell et al, 1982 ;Tamura & Yokota, 1994). The genus lacks mycolic acids (Prauser, 1976) and has a tetrahydrogenated menaquinone with Recent developments in molecular biology have resulted in new methods that can be used for the identification of micro-organisms. In particular, the introduction of PCR methodology has provided a vast range of techniques for rapid identification or differentiation at species and intraspecies levels (Vandamme et al, 1996) McClelland, 1990 ; Williams et al, 1990), amplified rDNA restriction analysis (Laguerre et al, 1994 ;Yoon et al, 1997a) and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP; Zabeau & Vos, 1993), have attracted much interest because of their universal applicability, simplicity and rapidity.…”

Terracoccus luteus gen. nov., sp. nov., an LL-Diaminopimelic Acid-Containing Coccoid Actinomycete from Soil

“…One of these diagnostic diamino acids, u-diaminopimelic acid ( L L -A ,~~) , was found to be characteristic of genera that had been described early, i.e., Streptomyces (44), Intraspurangium (12), and Sporichthya (17). Recent descriptions have considerably increased the number of ~~-A,pm-containing genera, which include Nucardioides (25,26), Terrabacter (2), Aeromicrobium (21), Luteococcus (42), Propioniferax (47), Microlunatus (24), and Friedmanniella (32). These genera represent five phylogenetic lineages (32,38), and in addition to their 16s rDNA sequence differences, they differ from each other in chemotaxonomic, morphological, and physiological properties (32).…”