Tepidimonas fonticaldi sp. nov., a slightly thermophilic betaproteobacterium isolated from a hot spring

Abstract

A slightly thermophilic bacterial strain, designated AT-A2T, was isolated from a hot spring water sample taken from the Antun hot spring in Taiwan and characterized using a polyphasic taxonomic approach. Cells of strain AT-A2T were aerobic, Gram-negative, motile by a single polar flagellum and formed non-pigmented colonies. Growth occurred at 35–60 °C (optimum, 55 °C), with 0–1.0 % NaCl (optimum, 0.2 %) and at pH 7.0–9.0 (optimum, pH 7.0). Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain AT-A2T belonged to the genus Tepidimonas and its closest neighbour was Tepidimonas thermarum AA-1T with a sequence similarity of 97.5 %. The predominant cellular fatty acids were C16 : 0 (40.2 %), summed feature 3 (C16 : 1ω7c and/or C16 : 1ω6c; 20.1 %) and C17 : 0 cyclo (11.5 %). The major respiratory quinone was Q-8. The polar lipid profile consisted of phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol, diphosphatidylglycerol, an uncharacterized aminolipid and several uncharacterized phospholipids. The DNA G+C content of strain AT-A2T was 70.1 mol%. The mean level of DNA–DNA relatedness between strain AT-A2T and Tepidimonas thermarum AA-1T was 23.9 %. On the basis of the phylogenetic and phenotypic data, strain AT-A2T should be classified as representing a novel species, for which the name Tepidimonas fonticaldi sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is AT-A2T ( = LMG 26746T = KCTC 23862T = BCRC 80391T).