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Isolation of a novel bacterium, Blautia glucerasei sp. nov., hydrolyzing plant glucosylceramide to ceramide

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Abstract

A bacterial strain that is capable of hydrolyzing plant glucosylceramide (GluCer) was newly isolated from dog feces. The novel strain, designated as strain HFTH-1T, hydrolyzed plant GluCer with a variety of chemical structures, but did not hydrolyze glucosylsphingosine, lactosylceramide, or monosialoganglioside GM3, indicating that strain HFTH-1T produces GluCer-specific glucosylceramidase. Strain HFTH-1T was Gram-positive, anaerobic, oval-spore-forming, rod-shaped, lecithinase-negative, and lipase-negative. It fermented a wide variety of carbohydrates and produced mainly acetate, formate, and lactate from glucose. The G + C content of its DNA was 40.7 mol%. The phylogenetic analysis of 16S rRNA sequence revealed that strain HFTH-1T is placed in the clostridial rRNA cluster XIVa, with Ruminococcus obeum as the nearest relative. Pairwise comparison revealed approximately 5.0% sequence divergence between strain HFTH-1T and the type strain of R. obeum. On the basis of its phenotypic characteristics and phylogenetic divergence, it is proposed that the hitherto unknown rod-shaped bacterial strain HFTH-1T (= DSM 22028T = NBRC 104932T) should be placed in the genus Blautia as a novel species, Blautia glucerasei sp. nov, the only currently known isolate of the species.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 18780205 and 18580274) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (MEXT), and by “High-Tech Research Center” Project for Private Universities: matching fund subsidy from MEXT, 2006–2008. We express our thanks to Tsuji Oil Mill co., Ltd. (Matsuzaka, Mie, Japan) for providing purified GluCer.

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  1. Hideki Furuya

    Present address: Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, 29425, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Life Science, College of Agriculture, Meiji University, Higashimita, Tama-ku, Kawasaki, 214-8571, Japan

    Hideki Furuya, Yukari Ide, Makiko Hamamoto, Narito Asanuma & Tsuneo Hino

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  1. Hideki Furuya
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Correspondence to Tsuneo Hino.

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Communicated by Erko Stackebrandt.

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Furuya, H., Ide, Y., Hamamoto, M. et al. Isolation of a novel bacterium, Blautia glucerasei sp. nov., hydrolyzing plant glucosylceramide to ceramide. Arch Microbiol 192, 365–372 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-010-0566-8

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