Rhodococcus qingshengii sp. nov., a carbendazim-degrading bacterium

Abstract

A Gram-positive, aerobic, non-motile, mesophilic strain, djl-6T, able to degrade carbendazim, was isolated from a carbendazim-contaminated soil sample from Jiangsu province, China. The taxonomic position of this isolate was analysed by using a polyphasic approach. Chemotaxonomic analysis including peptidoglycan type, diagnostic sugar composition, fatty acid profile, menaquinones, polar lipids and mycolic acids showed that the characteristics of strain djl-6T were in good agreement with those of the genus Rhodococcus. DNA–DNA hybridization showed that it had low genomic relatedness with Rhodococcus baikonurensis DSM 44587T (31.8 %), Rhodococcus erythropolis DSM 43066T (23.8 %) and Rhodococcus globerulus DSM 43954T (17.7 %), the three type strains to which strain djl-6T was most closely related based on 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis (99.78, 99.25 and 98.91 % similarity, respectively). Based on the phenotypic properties and DNA–DNA hybridization data, strain djl-6T (=CGMCC 1.6580T =KCTC 19205T) is proposed as the type strain of a novel Rhodococcus species, Rhodococcus qingshengii sp. nov.