Pedobacter chinensis sp. nov., a cellulose-decomposing bacterium from Arctic tundra soil

A novel bacterial strain, JDX94(T), was isolated from tundra soil sampled north of the Yellow River station, Arctic. Cells were Gram-stain-negative, non-spore-forming, short rod-shaped and aerobic. The strain displayed growth at 4-37 degrees C with an optimum at 28 degrees C, with 0-1.0 % (w/v) NaCl (optimum, 0%) and at pH 6.0-9.0 (optimum, pH 7.0-7.5). Cells contained summed feature 3 (comprising C-16:1 omega 7c and/or C-16:1 omega 6c), iso-C-15:0 and iso-C(17:0 )3-OH as its major cellular fatty acids and menaquinone-7 as the only respiratory quinone. The polar lipid profile of strain JDX94(T) consisted of phosphatidylethanolamine, two unidentified aminolipids and four unknown polar lipids. The DNA G+C content was 37.5 mol%. On the basis 16S rRNA gene sequence comparison, strain JDX94(T) showed the highest sequence similarity (96.7%) to Pedobacteragri JCM 15120(T), followed by Pedobacteralluvionis DSM 19624(T) (96.3 %). Furthermore, the average nucleotide identity and digital DNA-DNA hybridization values between strain JDX94(T) and related species of the genus Pedobacter were 74.6-79.2 % and 18.9-24.5 %, respectively. Based on the presented results, we propose a novel species for which the name Pedobacter chinensis sp. nov. is suggested, with the type strain JDX94(T) (=MCCC 1H00335(T)= KCTC 62850(T)).