Polymorphobacter megasporae sp. nov., isolated from an Antarctic lichen

A Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, orange-coloured, rod-shaped and non-motile bacterial strain, PAMC 29362(T), was isolated from an Antarctic lichen, Megaspora verrucosa. Phylogenetic and phylogenomic analyses indicated that strain PAMC 29362(T) belongs to the genus Polymorphobacter and was most closely related to Polymorphobacter arshaanensis (97.0% of 16S rRNA gene similarity), Polymorphobacter fuscus (96.3 %), Polymorphobacter multimanifer (95.3 %) and Polymorphobacter glacialis (95.2 %). Genomic relatedness analyses showed that strain PAMC 29362(T) is clearly distinguished from type strains of the genus Polymorphobacter based on values of average nucleotide identity (<74.3 %) and digital DNA-DNA hybridization (<20.4 %). The genomic DNA G+C content of PAMC 29362(T) was 65.5 %. The major fatty acids (>10 %) were summed feature 8 (C-18:1 omega 7c; 38.5 %) and summed feature 3 (C-16:1 omega 7c and/or C-16:1 omega 6c; 31.5 %). The major respiratory quinone was Q-10. Based on the results of phylogenetic, genome-based relatedness and physiological analyses, strain PAMC 29362(T) is proposed to represent a novel species of the genus Polymorphobacter , with the name Polymorphobacter megasporae sp. nov. The type strain is PAMC 29362(T) (=KCTC 82 578(T)=JCM 34545(T))