Rhodococcus soli sp. nov., an actinobacterium isolated from soil using a resuscitative technique

A Gram-positive, aerobic, non-motile, non-spore forming strain, designated DSD51WT, was isolated using a resuscitative technique from a soil sample collected from Kyoto park, Japan, and characterized by using a polyphasic approach. The morphological and chemotaxonomic properties of the isolate were typical of those of members of the genus Rhodococcus. Strain DSD51WT was found to form a coherent cluster with Rhodococcus hoagii ATCC 7005T, Rhodococcus equi NBRC 101255T, Rhodococcus defluvii CallT and Rhodococcus kunmingensis YIM 45607T as its closest phylogenetic neighbours in 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis. However, the DNA–DNA hybridization values with the above strains were 58.2 ± 2.2, 58.4 ± 1.9, 45.1 ± 1.4 and 40.3 ± 4.7 %, respectively. In combination with differences in physiological and biochemical properties, strain DSD51WT can be concluded to represent a novel species of the genus Rhodococcus, for which the name Rhodococcus soli sp. nov. is proposed, with the type strain DSD51WT (=KCTC 29259T = JCM 19627T = DSM 46662T = KACC 17838T).