Two strains of nocardioform actinomycetes, isolated from soil and plant litter in Yamanashi prefecture, Japan, showed substrate mycelium with purple to dark-red colours. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that the organisms belonged to the family Actinosynnemataceae and were related closely to Saccharothrix strains (96.7-98.0 % sequence similarity). The isolates contained MK-9(H 4 ) as the predominant menaquinone, meso-diaminopimelic acid, galactose as the diagnostic whole-cell sugar and

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... phosphatidylethanolamine as the predominant polar lipid. Based on a combination of cultural, physiological and chemotaxonomic properties, in addition to the phylogenetic analysis and DNA-DNA hybridization data, we propose a novel species, Saccharothrix violaceirubra sp. nov., for these strains, with the type strain YU 692-1 T (5NBRC 102064 T 5KCTC 19326 T ). Abbreviations: meso-A 2 pm, meso-diaminopimelic acid; SEM, scanning electron microscopy. The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of Saccharothrix violaceirubra YU 692-1 T is AB284261. A scanning electron micrograph of the synnemata of strain YU 692-1 T is available with the online version of this paper.