ORIGINAL PAPER Blastococcus colisei sp. nov, isolated from an archaeological amphitheatre Karima Hezbri . Imen Nouioui . Manfred Rohde . Peter Schumann . Maher Gtari . Hans-Peter Klenk . Maria del Carmen Montero-Calasanz . Faten Ghodhbane-Gtari Received: 30 September 2016 / Accepted: 10 November 2016 Ó Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 Abstract The taxonomic position of an actinobac- terial isolate, designated strain BMG 822 T , isolated from limestone from the Amphitheater of El Jem (Coliseum Thysdrus), Tunisia, was established using a polyphasic approach. Strain BMG 822 T was found to grow well at 30 °C and pH 6.5–8.0, and to be coral- coloured, Gram-positive, catalase and oxidase nega- tive. Whole cell hydrolysates contained meso-di- aminopimelic acid as the diagnostic diamino acid, glucose, galactose and ribose. The phospholipids detected were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylcholine, phos- phatidylinositol, phosphatidylethanolamine, hydroxy- phosphatidylethanolamine, an unidentified glycophospho- lipid and six unidentified phospholipids. MK-9(H 4 ) was found to be the predominant menaquinone, followed by MK-9(H 2 ) and MK-9. The major cellular fatty acids were identified as iso-C 16:0 ,C 18:1 x9c, C 17:1 x8c and iso-H- C 16:1 . The G?C content of the DNA (73.2%) is typical of the genus. High degrees of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity were found with the type strains of the genus Blastococcus (97.1–98.3%) followed by the type strains of Modestobacter (96.8–97.8%). Based on the above data and the phenotypic differences from the type strains of Blastococcus species, it is proposed that the isolate BMG 822 T (=DSM 46837 T =CECT 8823 T ) should be classified as the type strain of a novel species, Blastococ- cus colisei sp. nov. Keywords Geodermatophilaceae Á Novel species Á Polyphasic approach Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10482-016-0804-4) contains supple- mentary material, which is available to authorized users. K. Hezbri Á M. Gtari Á F. Ghodhbane-Gtari (&) Laboratoire Microorganismes et Biomole ´cules Actives, Universite ´ de Tunis El Manar (FST) & Universite ´ de Carthage (INSAT), 2092 Tunis, Tunisia e-mail: feten.ghodhbane@fst.rnu.tn I. Nouioui Á H.-P. Klenk Á M. d. C. Montero-Calasanz (&) School of Biology, Newcastle University, Ridley Building 2, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK e-mail: calasanz@newcastle.ac.uk M. Rohde Central Facility for Microscopy, HZI – Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Inhoffenstraße 7, 38124 Brunswick, Germany P. Schumann Á M. d. C. Montero-Calasanz Leibniz Institute DSMZ – German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, Inhoffenstraße 7B, 38124 Brunswick, Germany 123 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek DOI 10.1007/s10482-016-0804-4