Lactobacillus acidifarinae sp. nov. and Lactobacillus zymae sp. nov., from wheat sourdoughs.

Three heterofermentative lactic acid bacteria, obtained from Greek and Belgian artisanal wheat sourdoughs, were preliminarily identified as Lactobacillus brevis-like after screening using whole-cell protein fingerprinting and 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis. The three sourdough isolates showed nearly identical sequences (>99.7 % sequence similarity), and highest similarities of 98.2 and 97.6 % were obtained to the species Lactobacillus spicheri and Lactobacillus brevis, respectively. Growth characteristics, biochemical features, amplified fragment length polymorphism fingerprinting, DNA-DNA hybridizations and DNA G+C contents demonstrated that the isolates represent two novel Lactobacillus species. The names Lactobacillus acidifarinae sp. nov. and Lactobacillus zymae sp. nov. are proposed and the type strains are LMG 22200(T) (=R-19065(T)=CCM 7240(T)) and LMG 22198(T) (=R-18615(T)=CCM 7241(T)), respectively.