Sphingobacterium bovisgrunnientis sp nov., isolated from yak milk

A novel Gram-negative, rod shaped, non-motile bacterium, designated strain YK2(T), was isolated from yak milk from Leh, India. The strain was positive for oxidase-and catalase-activities and negative for starch hydrolysis, nitrate reduction, citrate utilization, urease, lysine decarboxylase and ornithine decarboxylase activities. The predominant fatty acids were iso-C-15 : 0, isoC(17) (:) (0) 3-OH, iso-C-17 : (1)omega 9c and C-16 (:) (1)omega 7c and/or C-16 (:) (1)omega 6c and/or iso-C-15 (:) (0) 2-OH (summed feature 3). The major polar lipids were phosphatidylethanolamine, one unidentified aminophospholipid and six unidentified lipids. The DNA G+C content of the strain was 38.9 mol%. The 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that strain YK2(T) was a member of the genus Sphingobacterium and closely related to Sphingobacterium alimentarium and Sphingobacterium composti with pair-wise sequence similarity of 98.3 and 97.9 %, respectively. The sequence similarity to other members of the genus Sphingobacterium was between 92.6 to 96.3 %. Phylogenetic analysis showed that strain YK2(T) clustered with Sphingobacterium alimentarium and together clustered with Sphingobacterium composti. DNA-DNA hybridization of strain YK2(T) with Sphingobacterium alimentarium WCC 4521(T) and Sphingobacterium composti T5-12(T) showed a relatedness of only 38 and 54 %, respectively. Based on the phenotypic characteristics and on phylogenetic inference, it appears that strain YK2(T) represents a novel species of the genus Sphingobacterium, for which the name Sphingobacterium bovisgrunnientis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain of Sphingobacterium bovisgrunnientis sp. nov. is YK2(T) (=MTCC 12631(T)=KCTC 52685 =JCM 31951(T)).