Polymorphobacter megasporae sp. nov., isolated from an Antarctic lichen

A Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, orange-coloured, rod-shaped and non-motile bacterial strain, PAMC 29362^T, was isolated from an Antarctic lichen, Megaspora verrucosa. Phylogenetic and phylogenomic analyses indicated that strain PAMC 29362^T belongs to the genus Polymorphobacter and was most closely related to Polymorphobacter arshaanensis (97.0% of 16S rRNA gene similarity), Polymorphobacter fuscus (96.3 %), Polymorphobacter multimanifer (95.3 %) and Polymorphobacter glacialis (95.2 %). Genomic relatedness analyses showed that strain PAMC 29362^T is clearly distinguished from type strains of the genus Polymorphobacter based on values of average nucleotide identity (<74.3 %) and digital DNA-DNA hybridization (<20.4 %). The genomic DNA G+C content of PAMC 29362^T was 65.5 %. The major fatty acids (>10 %) were summed feature 8 (C_18:1  ω7c; 38.5 %) and summed feature 3 (C_16:1  ω7c and/or C_16:1  ω6c; 31.5 %). The major respiratory quinone was Q-10. Based on the results of phylogenetic, genome-based relatedness and physiological analyses, strain PAMC 29362^T is proposed to represent a novel species of the genus Polymorphobacter, with the name Polymorphobacter megasporae sp. nov. The type strain is PAMC 29362^T (=KCTC 82 578^T=JCM 34545^T).