A polyphasic study was carried out to establish the taxonomic status of an Atacama Desert isolate, Streptomyces strain C34(T), which synthesises novel antibiotics, the chaxalactins and chaxamycins. The organism was shown to have chemotaxonomic, cultural and morphological properties consistent with its classification in the genus Streptomyces. Analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain C34(T) formed a distinct phyletic line in the Streptomyces gene tree that was very loosely associated with the type strains of several Streptomyces species. Multilocus sequence analysis based on five house-keeping gene alleles underpinned the separation of strain C34(T) from all of its nearest phylogenetic neighbours, apart from Streptomyces chiangmaiensis TA-1(T) and Streptomyces hyderabadensis OU-40(T) which are not currently in the MLSA database. Strain C34(T) was distinguished readily from the S. chiangmaiensis and S. hyderabadensis strains by using a combination of cultural and phenotypic data. Consequently, strain C34(T) is considered to represent a new species of the genus Streptomyces for which the name Streptomyces leeuwenhoekii sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is C34(T) (= DSM 42122(T) = NRRL B-24963(T)). Analysis of the whole-genome sequence of S. leeuwenhoekii, with 6,780 predicted open reading frames and a total genome size of around 7.86 Mb, revealed a high potential for natural product biosynthesis.