Correspondence

A reddish orange bacterium, strain K07-05T, was isolated from soil during a study of the bacterial diversity of a cold desert of the Indian Himalayas and was studied by using a polyphasic approach. The organism had morphological and chemotaxonomic properties consistent with its classification in the genus Kocuria. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence showed that strain K07-05T was closely related to Kocuria rosea DSM 20447T and Kocuria polaris MTCC3702T (98?1 and 97?8 % sequence similarity, respectively), whereas the sequence similarity values with respect to the other Kocuria species with validly published names were between 96?4 and 94?2%. However, the genomic relatedness, as shown by DNA–DNA hybridization, of strain K07-05T and K. polaris MTCC 3702T is 49?5 % and that with K. rosea MTCC 2522T is 24?0%. The DNAG+Ccontent of the strain is 75?3 mol%. The above data in combination with the phenotypic distinctiveness of K07-05T clearly indicate that the strain represents a novel species, for which the name Kocuria himachalensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is K07-05T (=MTCC 7020T=DSM 44905T=JCM 13326T). The genus Kocuria was taxonomically dissected from the genus Micrococcus to accommodate phylogenetically dis