Flavobacterium aerium sp. nov., a bacterium isolated from the air of the Icelandic volcanic island Surtsey

Abstract

A novel bacterium, designated 19SA41, was isolated from the air of the Icelandic volcanic island Surtsey. Cells of strain 19SA41 are Gram-stain-negative, strictly aerobic, non-motile rods and form pale yellow-pigmented colonies. The strain grows at 4-30 °C (optimum, 22 °C), at pH 6-10 (optimum, pH 7.5) and with 0-4% NaCl (optimum, 0.5%). Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that 19SA41 belonged to the genus Flavobacterium and is most similar to Flavobacterium xinjiangense DSM 19743^T, with a sequence similarity of 96.52%. The new strain contained iso-C_{15 : 0} (22%) and summed feature 3 (C_16∶1ω6c/C_16∶1ω7c) (20%) as the predominant fatty acids. The major respiratory quinone was menaquinone-6 (100%). The polar lipid profile consisted of phosphatidylethanolamine and several uncharacterized amino lipids, glycolipids and lipids. The genome of the new strain was 4.01 Mbp, and its G+C content was 33.2 mol%. Based on characterization and comparative results, using a polyphasic taxonomic approach, we propose that the new isolate represents a novel species of the genus Flavobacterium with the name Flavobacterium aerium sp. nov. The type strain is ISCaR-07695^T (=DSM 116640^T =UBOOC-M-3567^T).

Keywords: Flavobacterium; Iceland; air; genome; volcanic islands Surstey.

Fig. 1.. Maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showing the position of strain 19SA41 and related taxa. Bootstrap values >70% based on 1000 replicates are shown at branching points. Filled circles indicate nodes also recovered using neighbour-joining and maximum-parsimony algorithms. Bar, 0.020 substitutions per nucleotide position. ^T: type strain. The full phylogenetic tree can be found in the Supplementary Material.