Aquincola agrisoli sp. nov., isolated from rhizospheric soil of eggplant and in silico genome mining for the prediction of biosynthetic gene clusters

Abstract

A Gram-stain negative, aerobic, rod-shaped, motile and flagellated novel bacterial strain, designated MAHUQ-54T, was isolated from the rhizospheric soil of eggplant. The colonies were observed to be light pink coloured, smooth, spherical and 0.2–0.6 mm in diameter when grown on R2A agar medium for 2 days. MAHUQ-54T was able to grow at 15–40 °C, at pH 5.5–9.0 and in the presence of 0–0.5 % NaCl (w/v). The strain gave positive results for both catalase and oxidase tests. The strain was positive for hydrolysis of l-tyrosine, urea, Tween 20 and Tween 80. On the basis of the results of 16S rRNA gene sequence comparisons, the isolate was identified as a member of the genus Aquincola and is closely related to Aquincola tertiaricarbonis L10T (98.8 % sequence similarity) and Leptothrix mobilis Feox-1T (98.2 %). MAHUQ-54T has a draft genome size of 5 994 516 bp (60 contigs), annotated with 5348 protein-coding genes, 45 tRNA and 5 rRNA genes. The average nucleotide identity (ANI) and digital DNA–DNA hybridisation (dDDH) values between MAHUQ-54T and its closest phylogenetic neighbours were 75.8–83.3 and 20.8–25.3 %, respectively. In silico genome mining revealed that MAHUQ-54T has a significant potential for the production of novel natural products in the future. The genomic DNA G+C content was determined to be 70.4 %. The predominant isoprenoid quinone was ubiquinone-8. The major fatty acids were identified as C16  :  0, summed feature 3 (comprising C16  :  1ω7c and/or C16  :  1ω6c) and summed feature 8 (comprising C18  :  1ω7c and/or C18  :  1ω6c). On the basis of dDDH, ANI value, genotypic analysis, chemotaxonomic and physiological data, strain MAHUQ-54T represents a novel species within the genus Aquincola, for which the name Aquincola agrisoli sp. nov. is proposed, with MAHUQ-54T (=KACC 22001T = CGMCC 1.18515T) as the type strain.