N
ovosphingobium fluoreni sp. nov., isolated from rice seeds
A yellow-pigmented, Gram-stain-negative, rod-shaped, non-spore-forming bacterium designated strain HLJ-RS18T, which could degrade fluorene, was isolated from rice seeds collected from Heilongjiang Province, China. Similarities of full-length of 16S rRNA gene sequences between strain HJL-RS18T and the type strains of the genus Novosphingobium with validly published names ranged from 93.8 to 97.1 %. Phylogenetic analysis with maximum-likelihood and neighbour-joining methods revealed that strain HLJ-RS18T belonged to genus Novosphingobium and strain HLJ-RS18T formed a distinct clade to Novosphingobium chloroacetimidivorans BUT-14T (96.9 % similarity based on 16S rRNA gene). DNA–DNA hybridization of HLJ-RS18T and BUT-14T showed a low relatedness value of 22.4±0.9 %, which indicated that strain HLJ-RS18T represents a novel species of the genus Novosphingobium . The genomic DNA G+C content of strain HLJ-RS18T was 62 mol%. Ubiquinone Q-10 was the major respiratory quinone. Spermidine was the predominant polyamine. Polar lipids consisted mainly of aminophospholipid, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phospholipid and sphingoglycolipid. The predominant fatty acid composition of HLJ-RS18T were summed 8 (C18 : 1ω7c and/or C18 : 1ω6c, 61.5 %), C16 : 0 (14.2 %), summed 3 (C16 : 1ω7c and/or C16 : 1ω6c, 13.5 %) and C14 : 0 2-OH (6.8 %). Phylogenetic analysis, DNA–DNA hybridization, chemotaxonomic data and phenotypic characteristics support the conclusion that HLJ-RS18T represents a novel species within the genus Novosphingobium . Therefore, we propose the species Novosphingobium fluoreni sp. nov. with HLJ-RS18T ( = DSM 27568T = ACCC19180T) as the type strain.