Re-examination of the taxonomic status of Enterobacter helveticus, Enterobacter pulveris and Enterobacter turicensis as members of the genus Cronobacter and their reclassification in the genera Franconibacter gen. nov. and Siccibacter gen. nov. as Franconibacter helveticus comb. nov., Franconibacter pulveris comb. nov. and Siccibacter turicensis comb. nov., respectively

• DOI: 10.1099/ijs.0.059832-0
• Publication Date: 2014-07-16T07:11:33Z
• Authors: Roger Stephan; Christopher J. Grim; Gopal R. Gopinath; Mark K. Mammel; Venugopal Sathyam...; Larisa H. Trach; Hannah R. Chase; Séamus Fanning; Ben D. Tall
• Keywords: DNA, Bacterial; 0301 basic medicine; New Taxa; 2404 Microbiology; Molecular Sequence Data; Enterobacter; Nucleic Acid Hybridization; 610 Medicine & health; Sequence Analysis, DNA; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; Bacterial Typing Techniques; 03 medical and health sciences; 1105 Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics; Cronobacter; Enterobacteriaceae; Genes, Bacterial; RNA, Ribosomal, 16S; 570 Life sciences; biology; 10082 Institute of Food Safety and Hygiene; Phylogeny; Multilocus Sequence Typing

Recently, a taxonomical re-evaluation of the genus

Enterobacter

, based on multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) analysis, has led to the proposal that the species

Enterobacter pulveris

,

Enterobacter helveticus

and

Enterobacter turicensis

should be reclassified as novel species of the genus

Cronobacter

. In the present work, new genome-scale analyses, including average nucleotide identity, genome-scale phylogeny and k-mer analysis, coupled with previously reported DNA–DNA hybridization values and biochemical characterization strongly indicate that these three species of the genus

Enterobacter

are not members of the genus

Cronobacter

, nor do they belong to the re-evaluated genus

Enterobacter

. Furthermore, data from this polyphasic study indicated that all three species constitute two new genera. We propose reclassifying

Enterobacter pulveris

and

Enterobacter helveticus

in the genus Franconibacter gen. nov. as Franconibacter pulveris comb. nov. (type strain 601/05T = LMG 24057T = DSM 19144T) and Franconibacter helveticus comb. nov. (type strain 513/05T = LMG 23732T = DSM 18396T), respectively, and

Enterobacter turicensis

in the genus Siccibacter gen. nov. as Siccibacter turicensis comb. nov. (type strain 508/05T = LMG 23730T = DSM 18397T).