Methylobacterium planium sp. nov., isolated from a lichen sample

A novel bacterial strain, designated YIM 132548 ^T, was isolated from Lepraria sp. lichen collected from Yunnan province, south-west PR China. The organism was Gram-stain negative, aerobic and methylotrophic. The cell was catalase positive and oxidase negative, asporogenous, rod-shaped and motile with three polar flagella. The strain could grow at 15-30 °C (optimum, 20 °C), at pH 6.0-9.0 (optimum, pH 7.0) and does not grow in the presence of NaCl. According to the 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strain YIM 132548 ^T showed high levels of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity with Methylobacterium soli YIM 48816 ^T (97.6%) and Methylobacterium durans NBRC 112876 ^T (97.3%), less than 97.0% with other validly named type strains of the genus Methylobacterium. Ubiquinone Q-10 was the predominant respiratory ubiquinone. The predominant cellular fatty acid was identified as summed feature 8 (C_18:1ω7c). The major polar lipids were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylcholine. The DNA G + C content of the draft genome sequence is 70.2 mol%. The average nucleotide identity and digital DNA-DNA hybridizations values of strain YIM 132548 ^T with M. soli YIM 48816 ^T and M. durans NBRC 112876 ^T were 87.0% and 82.0%, 40.6% and 27.2% based on draft genome sequences, respectively. On the basis of phylogenetic, chemotaxonomic, phenotypic and genomic data, strain YIM 132548 ^T is concluded to represent a novel species of the genus Methylobacterium, for which the name Methylobacterium planium sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is YIM 132548 ^T (= CGMCC 1.17323 ^T = NBRC 114056 ^T).