Bacillus polymachus sp. nov., with a broad range of antibacterial activity, isolated from forest topsoil samples by using a modified culture method.

A new, modified culture method that utilizes a transwell plate with a 0.4 µm pore-size microporous membrane was developed. This system allows only trace nutrients from the soil into the liquid culture through the microporous membrane. The method is a more powerful tool for the discovery of novel species from soils than are traditional methods. Such newly identified species could potentially produce useful metabolites. A bacterial strain, T515(T), was isolated using this modified culture method. Growth of strain T515(T) occurred at pH 4-9 in a temperature range between 20 °C and 40 °C and in the presence of 0-2 % (w/v) NaCl on R2A agar. Colonies on the agar plates were tiny, white, and convex after 5 days incubation at 28 °C. Comparative analysis of the nearly full-length 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain T515(T) revealed close pairwise similarity with species of the genus Bacillus, and strain T515(T) was most closely related to Bacillus panaciterrae Gsoil 1517(T) (96.7 %) and Bacillus funiculus NAF001(T) (96.0 %). The major quinone of strain T515(T) was menaquinone-7 (MK-7) and the major fatty acids were iso-C15 : 0 (45.5 %), anteiso-C15 : 0 (23.2 %) and C16 : 0 (10.9 %). The predominant polar lipids were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylethanolamine. Strain T515(T) was sensitive to streptomycin and tetracycline, but resistant to rifampicin (0.125 µg ml(-1)), ampicillin (0.5 µg ml(-1)) and chloramphenicol (1 µg ml(-1)). The strain showed antimicrobial activities against the six strains tested: Bacillus subtilis KEMB 51201-001, Staphylococcus aureus KEMB 4659, Pseudomonas aeruginosa KACC 10185, Staphylococcus epidermidis KACC 13234, Paenibacillus larvae KACC 14031 and Escherichia coli KEMB 212-234. Based on these results, strain T515(T) represents a novel species of the genus Bacillus with the proposed name, Bacillus polymachus sp. nov. The type strain is T515(T) ( = KEMB 9005-168(T) = KACC 18242(T) = NBRC 110614(T)).