Reclassification of Bacteroides ureolyticus as Campylobacter ureolyticus comb. nov., and emended description of the genus Campylobacter

The protein profiles, genomic amplified fragment length polymorphism patterns and 16S rRNA and cpn60 gene sequences of a diverse collection of 26 Bacteroides ureolyticus strains, along with published data on their DNA base, respiratory quinone and cellular fatty acid compositions, were used to reassess the taxonomy of this bacterial species. The results demonstrate that this organism is most appropriately allocated in the genus Campylobacter. The presence of much higher amounts of 18 : 1omega7c in its cellular fatty acid profile and its ability to digest gelatin and casein are the characteristics that differentiate it from present species of the genus Campylobacter. Therefore we propose to reclassify this species incertae sedis into the genus Campylobacter as Campylobacter ureolyticus with strain LMG 6451(T) (=CCUG 7319(T) =NCTC 10941(T)) as the type strain.