Bhargavaea cecembensis gen. nov., s. nov., isolated from the Chagos-Laccadive ridge system in the Indian Ocean

A novel Gram-positive, rod-shaped, non-motile, non-spore-forming bacterium, strain DSE10(T), was isolated from a deep-sea sediment sample collected at a depth of 5904 m from the Chagos-Laccadive ridge system in the Indian Ocean. Cells of strain DSE10(T) were positive for catalase, oxidase, urease and lipase activities and contained iso-C-14:0, iso-C-15:0, iso-C-16:0 and anteiso-C-15:0 as the major fatty acids. The major respiratory quinones were MK-6 and MK-8 and the major lipids were phosphatidylglycerol and diphosphatidylglycerol. The cell-wall peptidoglycan contained diaminopimelic acid as the diagnostic diamino acid. A BLAST sequence similarity search based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that the genera Planococcus, Planomicrobium, Bacillus and Geobacillus were the nearest phylogenetic neighbours; to the novel isolate with gene sequence similarities ranging from 94.9 to 95.2%. Phylogenetic analyses using neighbour-joining, minimum-evolution and maximum-parsimony methods indicated that strain DSE10(T) formed a deeply rooted lineage distinct from the clades represented by the genera Planococcus, Planomicrobium, Bacillus and Geobacillus. Further, strain DSE10(T) could be distinguished from the above-mentioned genera based on the presence of signature nucleotides G, A, C, T, C, A, G, C and T at positions 182, 444, 480, 492, 563, 931, 1253, 1300 and 1391, respectively, in the 16S rRNA gene sequence. Based on the phenotypic and phylogenetic characteristics determined in this study, strain DSE10(T) was assigned as the type species of a new genus, Bhargavaea gen. nov., as Bhargavaea cecembensis sp. nov. The type strain of Bhargavaea cecembensis gen. nov., sp. nov. is DSE10(T) (=LMG 24411(T)=JCM 14375(T)). The genomic DNA G+C content of strain DSE10(T) is 59.5 +/- 2.5 mol%.