Methylobacterium tarhaniae sp. nov., isolated from arid soil

Abstract

A reddish-orange-pigmented, Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, facultatively methylotrophic strain, N4211T, isolated from arid soil, collected from Abuja, Nigeria, was analysed by using a polyphasic approach. Phylogenetic analysis, based on 16S rRNA gene sequences, showed that strain N4211T belonged to the genus Methylobacterium . Strain N4211T was most closely related to Methylobacterium aquaticum GR16T (98.56 %), Methylobacterium platani PMB02T (97.95 %) and Methylobacterium variabile GR3T (97.2 %), and the phylogenetic similarities to all other species of the genus Methylobacterium with validly published names were less than 97.0 %. The major ubiquinones detected were Q-10. The major fatty acids were summed feature 7 (C18 : 1 cis11/t9/t6). The DNA G+C content was 67.3 mol%. DNA–DNA relatedness of strain N4211T and the most closely related strains M. aquaticum DSM 16371T and M. platani KCTC 12901T were 60.0 and 48.2 %, respectively. On the basis of phenotypic, phylogenetic and DNA–DNA hybridization data, strain N4211T is assigned to a novel species of the genus Methylobacterium for which the name Methylobacterium tarhaniae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is N4211T( = KCTC 23615T = DSM 25844T).