Abstract
Summary Mycolic acid‐containing actinomycetes capable of metabolizing nitriles were recovered from deepsea sediments and terrestrial soils by enrichment culture on acetonitrile, benzonitrile, succinonitrile or bromoxynil. A total of 43 nitrile‐degrading strains were isolated and, together with previously reco‐vered nitrile‐degrading rhodococci, were identified by a polyphasic taxonomic approach, which included mycolic acid profiles, pyrolysis mass spectrometry (PyMS), genomic fingerprinting based on sequence variability of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene using polymerase chain reaction‐restriction fragment length polymorphism‐single‐strand conformational polymorphism, and 16S rRNA gene sequence comparison. Isolates phylogenetically related to Rhodococcus erythropolis dominated the culturable microorganisms from most marine and terrestrial samples. These isolates clustered together in a major pyrogroup that showed high congruence with PRS profiles of the 16S rRNA gene. Such high congruence also was obtained for other recovered isolates that were assigned to species of Rhodococcus and Gordonia . Sequencing data validated the results obtained by PRS analysis and enabled phylogenetic relationships to be established. Some of the recovered bacteria probably represent novel microbial species. The fact that nitrile‐metabolizing microorganisms were recovered from a wide range of habitat types suggests that nitrile transforming enzymatic activity is geographically widely distributed in nature.