Arthrobacter antarcticus sp. nov., isolated from an Antarctic marine sediment

A bacterial strain, SPC26(T), was isolated from a sediment sample of the Southern Ocean off Antarctica. The strain was Gram-staining- and catalase-positive and contained lysine and alanine in the cell-wall peptidoglycan. The major cellular fatty acids were anteiso-C-15:0 (54.92%), iso-C-15:0 (11.47%), anteiso-C-17:0 (6.48%) and anteiso-C-15:1 (6.38%) and the major menaquinones were MK-8, MK-9 and MK-10. The major polar lipids were phosphatidylethanolamine and diphosphatidylglycerol. The G C content was 68 +/- 0.5 mol%. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities, the nearest phylogenetic neighbours cif strain SPC26(T) were identified as Arthrobacter gangotriensis Lz1y(T). (98.8%), A. sulfureus DSM 20167(T) (98.6%), A. psychrophenolicus DSM 15454(T) (97.90%) and A. kerguelensis KGN15(T) (97.5). With these strains, strain SPC26(T) exhibited DNA DNA relatedness values of 36, 21, 12 and 10%, respectively. Therefore, on the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence comparisons, phylogenetic analysis, phenotypic characteristics and DNA DNA relatedness, it is proposed that strain SPC26(T) represents a novel species of Arthrobacter, for which the name Arthrobacter antarcticus sp. nov. is proposed, with strain SPC26(T) (=LMG 24542(T) =NCCB 100228(T)) as the type strain.