A rod shaped, Gram-stain positive, non-motile, facultative anaerobic and gelatin hydrolysing bacterium, strain PG1(T), was isolated from reclaimed land soil in Kyehwa-do, Republic of Korea. Strain PG1(T) showed highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity (97.4 and 96.5%, respectively) to Paenibacillus shenyangensis A9(T) and Paenibacillus hunanensis FeL05(T), and clustered closely with the members of the family Paenibacillaceae. DNA-DNA hybridization studies revealed a genomic relatedness of 47 ± 9% with P. shenyangensis A9(T). The predominant fatty acids of strain PG1(T) were identified to be anteiso-C(15:0) (46.7%) and C(16:0) (22.7%). Diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine and an unidentified phospholipid were found to be the major polar lipids. The genomic DNA G+C content was found to be 47.7 mol%. This polyphasic characterisation of the newly isolated strain PG1(T) justifies its description as representative of a novel species in the genus Paenibacillus, for which the name Paenibacillus gelatinilyticus sp. nov., (type strain = PG1(T) = KCTC 33642(T) = JCM 30624(T)) is proposed.
Keywords: Paenibacillus gelatinilyticus; Polyphasic taxonomy; Reclaimed soil.