Leifsonia pindariensis sp. nov., isolated from the Pindari glacier of the Indian Himalayas, and emended description of the genus Leifsonia.

Strain PON10(T) is a yellow-pigmented, Gram-positive, aerobic, motile, rod-shaped bacterium isolated from the Pindari glacier of the Indian Himalayas. The cell-wall peptidoglycan contained DL-diaminobutyric acid as the diamino acid. The predominant fatty acids were anteiso-C(15:0), anteiso-C(17:0) and iso-C(16:0) and the major isoprenoid quinones were MK-10 and MK-11. Based on the above characteristics, strain PON10(T) was assigned to the genus Leifsonia. blast sequence similarity results indicated that Leifsonia ginsengi and Leifsonia poae were the nearest relatives, with 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity of 97.0 and 96.8% to the respective type strains. A difference of 3% in the 16S rRNA gene sequence indicated that PON10(T) represents a novel species of the genus Leifsonia, and therefore DNA-DNA hybridization was not done. In addition, PON10(T) showed a number of differences from Leifsonia ginsengi and Leifsonia poae with respect to phenotypic and chemotaxonomic characteristics. Thus, based on the differences it exhibited from Leifsonia ginsengi and Leifsonia poae, strain PON10(T) was identified as representing a novel species named Leifsonia pindariensis sp. nov. The type strain is PON10(T) (=LMG 24222(T) =MTCC9128(T)). An emended description of the genus Leifsonia is also presented.