A new ethanol-producing bacterium, Saccharobacter fermentatus gen. nov., sp. nov., is proposed and described. This gram-negative, oxidase-negative, nonsporeforming, peritrichously flagellated bacterium ferments d-glucose to ethanol and CO2. It is H2 negative, indole negative, methyl red positive, Voges-Proskauer positive, urease negative, phenylalanine deaminase positive, and lysine decarboxylase negative. l-Arabinose, d-xylose, d-fructose, l-sorbose, d-mannitol, esculin, sucrose, maltose, and lactose are fermented with the production of acid and gas. Citrate is utilized for growth. This organism differs markedly from species in the previously described ethanol-producing genus Zymomonas. Zymomonas strains are anaerobic and degrade sugars by the Entner-Doudoroff pathway, while Saccharobacter strains are facultatively anaerobic and presumably degrade glucose by the Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas pathway. S. fermentatus was isolated from the leaves of agave in Wuhan, Hubei, People’s Republic of China. Type strain WVB8512 is preserved at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Academia Sinica, Wuhan, Hubei, People’s Republic of China.
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