Abstract
A highly chitinolytic facultative anaerobic, chemoheterotrophic, endospore-forming, Gram-stain-positive, rod-shaped bacterial strain N10T was isolated from the feces of a river otter in the Castril Natural Park (Granada, Spain). It is a slightly halophilic, motile, catalase-, oxidase-, ACC deaminase- and C4 and C8 lipase-positive strain. It is aerobic, respiratory and has a fermentative metabolism using oxygen as an electron acceptor, produces acids from glucose and can fix nitrogen. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence, multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) of 16S rRNA, gyrB, recA and rpoB, as well as phylogenomic analyses indicate that strain N10T is a novel species of the genus Paenibacillus, with the highest 16S rRNA sequence similarity (95.4%) to P. chitinolyticus LMG 18047T and <95% similarity to other species of the genus Paenibacillus. Digital DNA–DNA hybridization (dDDH) and average nucleotide identity (ANIb) were 21.1% and <75%, respectively. Its major cellular fatty acids were anteiso-C15:0, C16:0, and iso-C15:0. G + C content ranged between 45%–50%. Using 16S rRNA phylogenetic and in silico phylogenomic analyses, together with chemotaxonomic and phenotypic data, we demonstrate that type strain N10T (= CECT 9541T =LMG 30535T) is a novel species of genus Paenibacillus and the name Paenibacillus lutrae sp. nov. is proposed.
Highlights
Chitins, the second most abundant polymers after cellulose, are widely found in nature
We describe a new chitin-degrading species isolated from the feces of a river otter and demonstrate that the intestinal microbiota of crustacean-eating otters is a good source of bacteria with biotechnological potential as chitinase producers
Average nucleotide identity based on BLAST (ANIb) and MUMmer (ANIm) algorithms was determined with the aid of JSpeciesWS software [66], while digital DNA–DNA hybridization was calculated using the BLAST+ algorithm on the DSMZ Genome-to-Genome Distance Calculator (GGDC 2.1) platform [67]
Summary
The second most abundant polymers after cellulose, are widely found in nature They are present in arthropod, nematode, and mollusc integuments, in insect gut linings, fungal cell walls, some algae and in protozoan cysts [1]. A phylogenetic analysis of Bacillus species in 1992 based on 16S rRNA sequencing segregated the species into at least five distinct clusters, one of which was reassigned to the novel genus Paenibacillus [28]. We describe a new chitin-degrading species isolated from the feces of a river otter and demonstrate that the intestinal microbiota of crustacean-eating otters is a good source of bacteria with biotechnological potential as chitinase producers
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