The diversity of bacteria associated with biopsy material obtained from patients with colorectal cancer was investigated using culture techniques. A novel bacterium, strain CC70AT, was isolated by diluting a sample of homogenized tissue in anaerobic medium, and then plating to yield a pure culture. Strain CC70AT was a Gram-positive, strictly anaerobic, motile, rod-shaped bacterium. Formate, but not acetate, was a fermentative end-product from growth in peptone-yeast extract and peptone-yeast-glucose broth. The G+C content of DNA from strain CC70AT was 34.9 mol%. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis revealed that the isolate was part of the phylum Bacillota. The closest described relatives of strain CC70AT were Cellulosilyticum lentocellum (93.3 %) and Cellulosilyticum ruminicola (93.3 and 91.9% sequence similarity across 16S rRNA gene, respectively). According to the data obtained in this work, strain CC70AT represents a novel bacterium belonging to a new genus for which the name Holtiella tumoricola gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain for our described novel species is CC70AT (=DSM 27931T= JCM 30568T).
Keywords: 16S rRNA; Cellulosilyticum; average amino acid identity; genome; taxonomy.