Description of Leifsonia kafniensis sp nov and Leifsonia antarctica sp nov.

Strains KFC-22(T) and SPC-20(T) are yellow-pigmented, Gram-positive, aerobic, non-motile, rod-shaped bacteria that were isolated from a soil sample near the Kafni glacier in the Himalayan mountain ranges in India, and from a spade core sediment sample from the Antarctic Ocean at Larsemann Hill, respectively. In both cases, the cell-wall peptidoglycan contained 2,4-diaminobutyric acid as the diamino acid, anteiso-C-15:0, anteiso-C-17:0 and iso-C-16:0 were the predominant fatty acids and MK-11 was the major isoprenoid quinone in the cell membrane. On the basis of the above-mentioned characteristics, both strains can be assigned to the genus Leifsonia. The strains share 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity of 97.7% and DNA relatedness of only 10%, indicating that they represent different species. A BLAST analysis indicated that Leifsonia pindariensis POW10(T) was the closest phylogenetic neighbour of strains SPC-20(T) and KFC-22(T), showing 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities of 97.3 and 97.7%, respectively. However, at the whole-genome level, strains KFC-22(T) and SPC-20(T) shared 42 and 11% DNA-DNA relatedness, respectively, with L. pindariensis PON10(T). In addition, both strains exhibited several phenotypic differences with respect to L. pindariensis PON10(T). Thus, on the basis of the differences that the two strains exhibited with respect to L. pindariensis, both were identified as representing novel species of the genus Leifsonia, for which the names Leifsonia kafniensis, sp. nov. (type strain KFC-22(T)=NCCB 100216(T)=LMG 24362(T)) and Leifsonia antarctica sp. nov. (type strain SPC-20(T)=NCCB 100227(T)=LMG 24541(T)) are proposed.