ABSTRACT

A polyphasic approach including 16S rDNA sequencing, rep-polymerase chain reaction fingerprinting, DNA-DNA hybridization, chemotaxonomic and phenotypical analyses, allowed the description of seven novel species: Brachybacterium sacelli, Br. fresconis, Halomonas muralis, Virgibacillus carmonensis, V necropolis, V picturae and Bacillus decolorationis. A large discrepancy was found between culturing and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, and the latter revealed the existence of even more undescribed bacterial taxa. It can thus be concluded that the bacterial community associated with biodeterioration contains several novel bacterial taxa and that there is need for additional studies focusing on polyphasic characterization of the bacterial community associated with biodeterioration. The bulk of research on biodeterioration of mural paintings has focused on explaining the observed phenomena by analyzing the microflora present. For the samples taken from the mural paintings at Herberstein and Greene, the bacterial isolates studied by 16S rDNA sequencing were compared with the data obtained in a molecular approach that does not require prior culturing.