The gyrB gene was amplified by PCR as described previously. PCR was performed using the Takara Ex Taq kit. PCR products were purified with the PCR-M clean up system (Viogene) and sequenced with a BigDye Terminator v3.1 cycle-sequencing kit on a 3730 DNA sequencer (Applied Biosystems and Hitachi). DNA sequencing was determined using gyrB degenerate primers UP-1S and UP-2Sr and BS-F (59-GAAGGCGGNACNCAYGAAG-39) and BS-R (59-CTTCRTGNGTNCCGCCTTC-39)(designed from conserved regions of gyrB nucleotide sequences of members of the B. subtilis group) at 3.2 mM concentration. The DNA sequence was double-checked by sequencing both strands. Approximately 1.5 kb of the 16S rRNA gene was determined using the MicroSeq Full Gene 16S rDNA Bacterial Identification kit (Applied Biosystems).