Chitinophaga rhizophila sp. nov., isolated from rhizosphere soil of banana.

Abstract

A Gram-stain-negative, aerobic and rod-shaped bacterium, designated as strain B61T, was isolated from rhizosphere soil of banana collected from Dongguan, Guangdong Province, PR China. Growth occurred at 15-40 °C, within a pH range of pH 6.0-9.0. Results of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity and phylogenetic analyses showed that strain B61T was most closely related to 'Chitinophaga agri' KACC 21303 (98.9 %) and Chitinophaga pinensis DSM 2588T (98.8 %). The genome size was 7.6 Mb with a G+C content of 45.2 mol%. The genome-inferred average nucleotide identity values between strain B61T and two closely related strains were 79.2 and 79.3 %, respectively, with corresponding digital DNA-DNA hybridization values of 22.3 and 22.6 %. The major fatty acids of the novel strain were iso-C15:0, C16:1 ω5c and iso-C17:0 3-OH and the sole respiratory quinone was menaquinone 7 (MK-7). The polar lipids consisted of phosphatidylethanolamine, five unidentified aminolipids, four unidentified glycolipids and six unidentified lipids. The phenotypic and phylogenetic results clearly supported that strain B61T represents a novel species of the genus Chitinophaga, for which the name Chitinophaga rhizophila, sp. nov. is proposed, with the type strain B61T (=GDMCC 1.2608T=KCTC 82856T).