Abstract
The genus Chryseobacterium in the family Weeksellaceae is known to be polyphyletic. Amino acid identity (AAI) values were calculated from whole-genome sequences of species of the genus Chryseobacterium, and their distribution was found to be multi-modal. These naturally-occurring non-continuities were leveraged to standardise genus assignment of these species. We speculate that this multi-modal distribution is a consequence of loss of biodiversity during major extinction events, leading to the concept that a bacterial genus corresponds to a set of species that diversified since the Permian extinction. Transfer of nine species ( Chryseobacterium arachidiradicis , Chryseobacterium bovis, Chryseobacterium caeni, Chryseobacterium hispanicum, Chryseobacterium hominis, Chryseobacterium hungaricum,, Chryseobacterium pallidum and Chryseobacterium zeae ) to the genus Epilithonimonas and eleven ( Chryseobacterium anthropi , Chryseobacterium antarcticum , Chryseobacterium carnis , Chryseobacterium chaponense , Chryseobacterium haifense, Chryseobacterium jeonii, Chryseobacterium montanum , Chryseobacterium palustre , Chryseobacterium solincola , Chryseobacterium treverense and Chryseobacterium yonginense ) to the genus Kaistella is proposed. Two novel species are described: Kaistella daneshvariae sp. nov. and Epilithonimonas vandammei sp. nov. Evidence is presented to support the assignment of Planobacterium taklimakanense to a genus apart from Chryseobacterium, to which Planobacterium salipaludis comb nov. also belongs. The novel genus Halpernia is proposed, to contain the type species Halpernia frigidisoli comb. nov., along with Halpernia humi comb. nov., and Halpernia marina comb. nov.
Highlights
The history of the genus Chryseobacterium is complicated by multiple instances in which species from other genera have been transferred into or removed from the genus
A decade later, the genus Kaistella was created with a single species, Kaistella koreensis, to accommodate three strains with 16S rRNA sequences quite distant from the type strains of the species of the genus Chryseobacterium that had been published at that time [5]
The genus Planobacterium was created with the description of Planobacterium taklimakanense [11], which was later proposed to belong to the genus Chryseobacterium on the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity [12]
Summary
Nicholson et al, Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol. 2020;70:4432–4450 DOI 10.1099/ijsem.0.003935 Ainsley C. Nicholson1,*, Christopher A. Gulvik1, Anne M. Whitney1, Ben W. Humrighouse1, Melissa E. Bell1, Barry Holmes2, Arnie G. Steigerwalt1, Aaron Villarma1, Mili Sheth3, Dhwani Batra3, Lori A. Rowe3, Mark Burroughs3, Jessica C. Pryor1, Jean-François Bernardet4, Celia Hugo5, Peter Kämpfer6, Jeffrey D. Newman5,7 and John R. McQuiston1
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