Lactobacillus paralimentarius sp nov., isolated from sourdough

Six strains of lactic acid bacteria isolated from sourdough were characterized Institute of Physical and taxonomically. They were Cram-positive, catalase-negative, facultatively Institute of Physical and anaerobic rods that did not produce gas from glucose. Morphological and physiological data indicated that the strains belong to the genus Lactobacillus and they were similar to Lactobacillus alimentarius in phenotypic characteristics. These strains shared the same phenotypic characteristics and exhibited intragroup DNA homology values of over 89.8%, indicating that they comprised a single species. The G+C content of the DNA for the strains was 37.2-38.0 mol%. The 16S rRNA sequence of representative strain Tn 1(T) was determined and aligned with that of other Lactobacillus species. This strain was placed in the genus Lactobacillus on the basis of phylogenetic analysis. L. alimentarius was the most closely related species in the phylogenetic tree and this species also showed the highest sequence homology value (96%) with strain TB 1(T). DNA-DNA hybridization indicated that strain TB 1(T) did not belong to L. alimentarius. It is proposed that these strains are placed in the genus Lactobacillus as a new species, Lactobacillus paralimentarius sp. nov. The type strain of L. paralimentarius is TB 1(T), which has been deposited in the Japan Collection of Microorganisms (JCM) as strain JCM 10415(T).