Sphingomonas laterariae sp. nov., isolated from a hexachlorocyclohexane-contaminated dump site

A Gram-staining-negative, non-motile, cream-coloured and rod-shaped bacterium, designated strain LNB2(T), was isolated from a hexachlorocyclohexane-contaminated dump site in the village of Ummari, in northern India. The taxonomic position of the novel strain was investigated by using a polyphasic approach. In a phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences, strain LNB2(T) appeared to be most closely related to Sphingomonas haloaromaticamans A175(T) (98.0% sequence similarity) and Sphingomonas histidinilytica UM2(T) (97.3%). In DNA-DNA hybridizations, the levels of DNA-DNA relatedness between the novel strain and S. haloaromaticamans A175(T) and S. histidinilytica UM2(T) were found to be low (8.6% and 5.6%, respectively). The genomic DNA G+C content of strain LNB2(T) was 61.0 mol%. The novel strain's predominant fatty acids were summed feature 8 (C(18:1)ω7c and/or C(18:1)ω6c), C(16:0), summed feature 3 (C(16:1)ω7c and/or C(16:1)ω6c), C(14:0) 2-OH, C(17:1)ω6c and 11-methyl C(18:1)ω7c. The major ubiquinone was Q-10, the predominant polyamine was homospermidine, and the major polar lipids were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylcholine, sphingoglycolipid, phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidyldimethylethanolamine. Based on the phylogenetic, biochemical and chemotaxonomic evidence and the results of the DNA-DNA hybridizations, strain LNB2(T) represents a novel species of the genus Sphingomonas, for which the name Sphingomonas laterariae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is LNB2(T) ( = MTCC 10873(T) = CCM 7880(T) = DSM 25432(T)).