A Gram-negative, rod-shaped, oxidase-positive, non-spore-forming, non-motile bacterium (KSS 7.8 T ) was isolated from a water-mixed metal-working fluid. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene and recA sequence similarities, the isolate was clearly grouped in the genus Pseudochrobactrum. This allocation was confirmed by fatty acid data (major fatty acids: C 18 : 2 v7c and C 19 : 0 cyclo v8c), polar lipid profile (major components: phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol, diphosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylcholine, plus moderate amounts of phosphatidylmonomethylethanolamine and unknown aminolipid AL1), quinone system (ubiquinone Q-10) and polyamine pattern (spermidine and putrescine predominant). DNA-DNA pairing with the most closely related Pseudochrobactrum species showed values ranging from 24.2 to 45.7 %, and physiological and biochemical data clearly differentiated this isolate from described Pseudochrobactrum species. This organism represents a novel species of the genus Pseudochrobactrum, for which the name Pseudochrobactrum lubricantis sp. nov. is proposed, with the type strain KSS 7.8 T (5CCUG 56963 T 5CCM 7581 T ).The genus Pseudochrobactrum was proposed by Kämpfer et al. (2006). At present, it comprises Pseudochrobactrum saccharolyticum, Pseudochrobactrum asaccharolyticum, Pseudochrobactrum kiredjianiae (Kämpfer et al., 2006(Kämpfer et al., , 2007 and Pseudochrobactum glaciei (Romanenko et al., 2008). Members of the genus can be clearly differentiated from members of the genera Ochrobactrum and Brucella on the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence and recA sequence data, as well as chemotaxonomic data (Kämpfer et al., 2006(Kämpfer et al., , 2007.Strain KSS 7.8 T was isolated from a metal-working fluid of a metal-processing company in Germany on nutrient agar at 30 u C. Subcultivation was done on tryptone soy agar at 28 uC for 48 h. On this agar, this organism grew also at 15-45 u C, but not at 10 or 50 u C. Growth at 30 u C was also observed on MacConkey agar and R2A agar (all from Oxoid).Gram staining was performed as described by Gerhardt et al. (1994). Cell morphology was observed under a Zeiss light microscope at 61000, with cells grown for 3 days at 30 u C on nutrient agar. The 16S rRNA gene was analysed as described previously (Kämpfer et al., 2003). Sequence analysis and similarity calculations were carried out by using the software programs Bionumerics v. 4.0 (Applied Maths BVBA) and MEGA v. 3.1 (Kumar et al., 2004). The sequenced length of the 16S rRNA gene was 1401 bp (GenBank accession no. FM209496) for strain KSS 7.8 T . Sequence similarities to the three most closely related Pseudochrobactrum species were 99.8 % to P. saccharolyticum CCUG 33852 T , 99.8 % to P. asaccharolyticum CCUG 46016 T and 99.3 % to P. kiredjianiae CCUG 49584 T . A lower similarity of 96.2 % was found to P. glaciei KMM 3858 T . The 16S rRNA gene-based tree shown in Fig. 1 results from a neighbour-joining reconstruction using the Kimura two-parameter correction and 1000 resamplings for bootstrap analysis.The partial r...