Arthrobacter celericrescens sp. nov., isolated from forest soil

A novel bacterial strain, designated NEAU-SA2(T), was isolated from forest soil collected from the Zhangjiajie city, Hunan Province, PR China and characterised using a polyphasic approach. The cells were aerobic, Gram-stain-positive, non-flagellated and rod-coccus-shaped. The strain grew optimally at 28 degrees C, pH 7.0 and with 0% NaCl (w/v). Phylogenetic analysis based on the 16S rRNA gene sequence indicated that the organism should be assigned to the genus Arthrobacter and was closely related to Arthrobacter cupressi DSM 24664(T) (98.89 %) and Arthrobacter silvisoli CCTCC AB 2017271(T) (98.41 %), which was further confirmed by multilocus sequence analysis. The major cellular fatty acids were anteiso-C-15 : 0, anteiso-C-17 : 0 and C-16 : 0; MK-9(H-2) was the predominant respiratory quinone. The polar lipids comprised diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylinositol and an unidentified glycolipid. The peptidoglycan type was A3 alpha, and the cell-wall sugars were glucose and galactose. The genomic G+C content of strain NEAU-SA2(T) was 67.04 mol%. The average nucleotide identity values between NEAU-SA2(T) and A. cupressi DSM 24664(T) and A. silvisoli CCTCC AB 2017271(T) were 88.57-90.94 %. The digital DNA-DNA hybridisation values between strain NEAU-SA2(T) and its most closely related species were 37.00 and 41.10 %, respectively, again indicating that they belong to different taxa. Therefore, strain NEAU-SA2(T) represents a novel species of the genus Arthrobacter, for which the name Arthrobacter celericrescens sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is NEAU-SA2(T) (=DSM 106718(T) =CCTCC AB 2017272(T)).