Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. sunkii subsp. nov., isolated from sunki, a traditional Japanese pickle

Abstract

Although four strains of bacteria isolated from sunki, a traditional Japanese, non-salted pickle, were initially identified as Lactobacillus delbrueckii , the molecular and phenotypic characteristics of the strains did not match those of any of the four recognized subspecies of L. delbrueckii . Together, the results of phenotypic characterization, DNA–DNA hybridizations (in which the relatedness values between the novel strains and type strains of the recognized subspecies of L. delbrueckii were all >88.7 %) and 16S rRNA gene sequence, amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and whole-cell MALDI-TOF/MS spectral pattern analyses indicated that the four novel strains represented a single, novel subspecies, for which the name Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. sunkii subsp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is YIT 11221T ( = JCM 17838T  = DSM 24966T).