Reclassification of Sphingomonas aeria as a later heterotypic synonym of Sphingomonas carotinifaciens based on whole-genome sequence analysis
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Updated: Dec 28, 2025

Heuristic Mining of Hierarchical Genotypes and Accessory Genome Loci in Bacterial Populations
Published on: December 7, 2021
Munusamy Madhaiyan1, Venkatakrishnan Sivaraj Saravanan2, Joseph S Wirth3
1Biomaterials and Biocatalysts, Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, 1 Research Link, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117604.
Abstract:
The 16S rRNA gene sequences of Sphingomonas carotinifaciens L9-754T and Sphingomonas aeria B093034T possess 99.71 % sequence similarity. Further studies were undertaken to clarify the taxonomic assignments of these species. Whole-genome comparisons showed that S. aeria B093034Tand S. carotinifaciens L9-754T shared 96.9 % average nucleotide identity, 98.4 % average amino acid identity and 76.1 % digital DNA-DNA hybridization values. These values exceeded or approached the recommended species delineation threshold values. Furthermore, a phylogenetic tree based on 41 of the most conserved genes provided additional evidence that S. aeria B093034T and S. carotinifaciens L9-754T are very closely related. Based on this evidence we propose the reclassification of S. aeria Xue et al. 2018 as a later heterotypic synonym of S. carotinifaciens Madhaiyan et al. 2017.
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