Phenotypic andmolecular identification analyseswere performed to
identify the seven candidate strains. After Gram-staining and morphological
characterization the isolates were subjected to phenotypic tests
for conventional identification using the API 20E commercial kit (Api
System; BioMérieux, Marcy l'Etoile, France).
Extraction and amplification of bacterial template DNA for 16S rRNA
sequence analysis were carried out as described previously (Labreuche
et al., 2012; Walling et al., 2010). The DNA sequences were compared
against the sequences available in the databases obtained from the National
Center for Biotechnology Information using the BLAST algorithm
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST/) to determine nucleotidenucleotide
similarity with sequences in the nr/nt database. The 16S
rRNA gene sequences determined in this study have been deposited in