Characterization of Romboutsia ilealis gen. nov., sp. nov., isolated from the gastro-intestinal tract of a rat and proposal for the reclassification of five closely related members of the genus Clostridium into the genera Romboutsia gen. nov., Intestinibacter gen. nov., Terrisporobacter gen. nov. and Asaccharospora gen. nov.

A Gram-positive staining, rod-shaped, non-motile, spore-forming obligately anaerobic bacterium, designated CRIBT, was isolated from the gastro-intestinal tract of a rat and characterized. The major cellular fatty acids of strain CRIBT were saturated and unsaturated straight chain C12-C19 fatty acids, with C16:0 being the predominant fatty acid. The polar lipid profile comprised six glycolipids, four phospholipids and one lipid that did not stain with any of the specific spray reagents used. The only quinone was MK-6. The predominating cell wall sugars were glucose and galactose. The peptidoglycan type of strain CRIBT was A1d lanthionine-direct. The genomic DNA G+C content of strain CRIBT was 28.1 mol %. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, strain CRIBT was most closely related to a number of Clostridium species, including C. lituseburense (97.2 %), C. glycolicum (96.2 %), C. mayombei (96.2 %), C. bartlettii (96.0 %) and C. irregulare (95.5 %). All these species show very low 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity