Achromobacter animicus sp nov., Achromobacter mucicolens sp nov., Achromobacter pulmonis sp nov and Achromobacter spiritinus sp nov., from human clinical samples

The phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of fourteen human clinical Achromobacter strains representing four genogroups which were delineated by sequence analysis of nusA, eno, rpoB, gltB, lepA, nuoL and nrdA loci, demonstrated that they represent four novel Achromobacter species. The present study also characterized and provided two additional reference strains for Achromobacter ruhlandii and Achromobacter marplatensis, species for which, thus far, only single strains are publicly available, and further validated the use of 2.1% concatenated nusA, eno, rpoB, gltB, lepA, nuoL and nrdA sequence divergence as a threshold value for species delineation in this genus. Finally, although most Achromobacter species can be distinguished by biochemical characteristics, the present study also highlighted considerable phenotypic intraspecies variability and demonstrated that the type strains may be phenotypically poor representatives of the species. We propose to classify the fourteen human clinical strains as Achromobacter mucicolens sp. nov. (with strain LMG 26685(T) [=CCUG 61961(T)] as the type strain), Achromobacter animicus sp. nov. (with strain LMG 266901 [=CCUG 619661] as the type strain), Achromobacter spiritinus sp. nov. (with strain LMG 26692(T) [=CCUG 619681] as the type strain), and Achromobacter pulmonis sp. nov. (with strain LMG 26696(T) [=CCUG 61972(T)] as the type strain). (C) 2012 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.