Morphological and genomic characteristics of two novel halotolerant actinomycetes, Tomitella gaofuii sp. nov. and Tomitella fengzijianii sp. nov. isolated from bat faeces.

Four white-pigmented, Gram-staining-positive, strictly aerobic, non-spore-forming, irregular rod-shaped bacteria were isolated from the faeces of bats collected from Guangxi autonomous region (22°20'54″N, 106°49'20″E; July 28, 2011) and Chongqing city (30°02'15″N, 107°07'4″E; September 1, 2011) of South China. The strains shared 99.3-99.9% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity by BLAST search among them, and belonged to genus Tomitella according to 16S rRNA gene and genomic sequence-based phylogenetic/phylogenomic analyses. Strains HY172T and HY188T contained meso-diaminopimelic acid as the diagnostic diamino acid, and arabinose, glucose, galactose or ribose in their whole-cell hydrolysates. Besides sharing phosphatidylethanolamine, diphosphatidylglycerol and unidentified glycolipid(s) in their polar lipid profiles, additionally HY172T had one unidentified phosphoglycolipid and three unidentified phospholipids whereas HY188T had phosphatidyl inositol mannoside and four unidentified aminolipids. The main cellular fatty acids of strains HY172T and HY188T were C16:0, C18:0 10-methyl, C18:1ω9c and summed feature 3. The genomic DNA G + C contents of both strains (HY172T and HY188T) were 70.9 %. The genus Tomitella contains 2311 core genes, and resuscitation promoting factor (rpf) genes can be found in all members of Tomitella. The digital DNA-DNA hybridization and average nucleotide identity values of the four novel strains with other members of the genus Tomitella were within the ranges of 20.1-45.2% and 74.8-91.9%, respectively, all below the respective recommended 70.0% and 95-96% cutoff point. Based on phylogenetic, chemotaxonomic and phenotypic analyses, these four strains could be classified as two novel species of the genus Tomitella, for which the names Tomitella gaofuii sp. nov. and Tomitella fengzijianii sp. nov. are proposed. The type strains are HY172T (= CGMCC 1.18701T = JCM 34231T) and HY188T (= CGMCC 1.16971T = JCM 33467T), respectively.