Terrabacter koreensis sp. nov., isolated from soil of a flowerbed

Abstract

A Gram-staining-positive, non-spore-forming, rod-shaped, non-motile and aerobic bacterium, strain THG-e54T, was isolated from soil of a flowerbed in Bucheon, South Korea. The taxonomic position of this bacterium was determined in an investigation based on a polyphasic approach. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis revealed a clear affiliation of strain THG-e54T with the genus Terrabacter . Strain THG-e54T showed the closest phylogenetic relationship with Terrabacter tumescens DSM 20308T with a 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity of 98.6 %. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 71.0 mol%. The major cellular fatty acids of strain THG-e54T were iso-C15 : 0 and iso-C16 : 0, and the predominant menaquinone was menaquinone MK-8(H4). The major polar lipids were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylinositol, an unidentified amino-containing phosphoglycolipid, unidentified phospholipids, an unidentified aminolipid and an unidentified aminophospholipid. The cell-wall peptidoglycan type was ll-diaminopimelic acid and the cell-wall sugars were glucose and ribose. DNA–DNA hybridization experiments revealed a low level of DNA–DNA relatedness (less than 35.2 %) between strain THG-e54T and its five closest relatives. The combined phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic data showed that strain THG-e54T could be clearly distinguished from closely related recognized members of the genus Terrabacter . Therefore the results of this study indicated the existence of a novel species of the genus Terrabacter , for which we propose the name Terrabacter koreensis sp. nov., with strain THG-e54T ( = KACC 17589T = JCM 19342T) as the type strain.