Proposal of Neotype for Clostridium thermohydrosulfuricum and the Merging of Clostridium tartarivorum with Clostridium thermosaccharolyticum

Abstract

The deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) relationships among strains of the thermophilic species Clostridium thermohydrosulfuricum, C. thermosaccharolyticum, and C. tartarivorum, other saccharolytic, proteolytic, and acetate-producing clostridia, and some sulfate-reducing bacteria were studied by DNA-DNA hybridization experiments. Strains of the species C. thermohydrosulfuricum were found to constitute a genotypically homogeneous group clearly unrelated to the strains of the species C. thermosaccharolyticum and other competitor strains used. Strains of the species C. tartarivorum showed a high level of homology with the reference strain C. thermosaccharolyticum ATCC 7956. The guanine-plus-cytosine contents of the acetate-forming clostridia C. formicoaceticum and C. thermoaceticum were 34.0 and 54.0 mol%, respectively.