Cophenetic correlations are shown next to the branches. Bacterial growth and biochemical identification All strains were stored at −70°C, plated on sheep blood agar (Columbia blood agar, Oxoid, UK) and grown at 30°C overnight. Biochemical characterization was performed on pure cultures by using API 50 CH cassettes (bioMérieux, Marcy l’Etoile, France) according to the instructions given

by the manufacturer [41]. Color changes were examined after 24 and 48 h at 30°C and compared to the Bacillus identification profile database, API Lab1 XAV 939 (version 4.0). The reaction profiles of these tests were compared with the ApiwebTM database provided by the manufacturer. DNA extraction Bacteria were grown on sheep blood agar at 30°C overnight. Single colony material was inoculated in 20 ml Luria broth (LB). The bacterial culture

was grown overnight at 30°C and centrifuged at 3000 × g for 10 min. The supernatant Sepantronium was discarded and the pellet resuspended in 1 ml enzymatic lysis buffer (20 mM Tris·Cl, pH 8.0, 20 mM Tris·Cl, pH 8.0, 1.2% Triton® X-100, 20 mg/ml lysozyme). Further DNA extraction was performed according to the protocol provided by DNeasy Blood and Tissue Kit (Qiagen, USA). The final DNA concentration ranged from 8–72 ng/ul with a mean 260/280

absorbance ratio of 1, 89 (Nanodrop ND-1000 Spectrophotometer, Thermo Fisher Scientific, USA). MLST scheme Primer design The MLST scheme was created according to general guidelines described in [42]. Primers were designed to amplify internal fragments of candidate-genes of the publicly available B. licheniformis ATCC14580 genome (GenBank: NC_00627) using the Primer3 software [43]. The choice of candidate-genes was based previously published genotyping schemes for members of the Bacillus genus [28, 32, 36]. The primers targeted much 400-718 bp fragments of the nine house-keeping genes adk, ccpA, glpT, gyrB, pyrE, recF, rpoB, sucC and spo0A which were dispersed over the entire genome. The primers targeting rpoB have been described in a previous publication and was included for comparison [28]. All primers were synthesized by see more Invitrogen Life Sciences, Norway. Primers and their targets are listed in Table  1 Primers that were used in the final MLST scheme are typed in bold.