Novosphingobium malaysiense sp. nov. isolated from mangrove sediment

A novel bacterium, strain MUSC 273T, was isolated from mangrove sediments of the Tanjung Lumpur river in the state of Pahang in peninsular Malaysia. The bacterium was yellow-pigmented, Gram-negative, rod-shaped and non-spore-forming. The taxonomy of strain MUSC 273T was studied by a polyphasic approach and the organism showed a range of phenotypic and chemotaxonomic properties consistent with those of the genus Novosphingobium. The 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain MUSC 273T showed the highest sequence similarity to those of Novosphingobium indicum H25T (96.8 ), N. naphthalenivorans TUT562T (96.4 ) and N. soli CC-TPE-1T (95.9 ) and lower sequence similarity to members of all other species of the genus Novosphingobium. Furthermore, in phylogenetic analyses based on the 16S rRNA gene sequence, strain MUSC 273T formed a distinct cluster with members of the genus Novosphingobium. DNA-DNA relatedness of strain MUSC 273T to the type strains of the most closely related species, N. indicum MCCC 1A01080T and N. naphthalenivorans DSM 18518T, was 29.2 (reciprocal 31.0 ) and 17 (reciprocal 18 ), respectively. The major respiratory quinone was ubiquinone Q-10, the major polyamine was spermidine and the DNA G+C content was 63.3?0.1 mol . The polar lipids consisted of diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylmethylethanolamine, phosphatidyldimethylethanolamine, phosphatidylcholine and sphingoglycolipid. The major fatty acids were C18: 1?7c, C17: 1?6c, C16: 0, C15: 0 2-OH and C16: 1?7c. Comparison of BOX-PCR fingerprints indicated that strain MUSC 273T represented a unique DNA profile. The combined genotypic and phenotypic data showed that strain MUSC 273T represents a novel species of the genus Novosphingobium, for which the name Novosphingobium malaysiense sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is MUSC 273T (= DSM 27798T = MCCC 1A00645T = NBRC 109947T).