Sphingoaurantiacus capsulatus sp. nov., isolated from mountain soil, and emended description of the genus Sphingoaurantiacus.

Abstract

A novel Gram-stain-negative, strictly aerobic, non-motile, rod-shaped, capsule-forming bacterium, designated strain YLT33T, that formed orange-red colonies was isolated from mountain cliff soil from Enshi Grand Canyon, southwest China. Growth occurred at 4-35 °C (optimum 28 °C) and at pH 6.0-10.0 (optimum 7.0). It showed maximum (99.3 %) 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity and formed a monophyletic clade with Sphingoaurantiacus polygranulatusMC 3718T (=CCTCC 2014274T). The DNA G+C content was 68.5 mol% and strain YLT33T showed a 50.5 % DNA-DNA relatedness value to S. polygranulatusMC 3718T. The major fatty acids (>5 %) were C17 : 1ω6c (40.7 %), C15 : 0 (10.4 %), C15 : 1ω6c (9.4 %), summed feature 3 (C16 : 1ω7c and/or iso-C15 : 0 2-OH; 8.6 %), C17 : 1ω8c (7.1 %), C18 : 1ω7c (6.1 %), and C15 : 0 2-OH (5.7 %). Ubiquinone-10 was the sole respiratory quinone. The polar lipids of strain YLT33T contained diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylcholine, sphingoglycolipid, two unknown glycolipids and one unknown phospholipid. Carotenoids were present in cells. Homospermidine was the major polyamine. In addition, strain YLT33T showed obvious differences from the closely related strain S. polygranulatusMC 3718T with respect to major polar lipids, fatty acids and other morphological, physiological and biochemical characteristics. These results from polyphasic taxonomic studies reveal that strain YLT33T represents a novel species of the genus Sphingoaurantiacus, for which the name Sphingoaurantiacuscapsulatus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is YLT33T (=CCTCC AB 2015150T=KCTC 42644T).