Chryseobacterium glaciei sp. nov., isolated from the surface of a glacier in the Indian trans-Himalayas.

A novel bacterial strain, IHBB 10212, of the genus Chryseobacterium was isolated from a glacier near the Kunzum Pass located in the Lahaul-Spiti in the North-Western Himalayas of India. The cells were Gram-negative, aerobic, non-sporulating, single rods, lacked flagella, and formed yellow to orange pigmented colonies. The strain utilized maltose, trehalose, sucrose, gentibiose, glucose, mannose, fructose, mannitol, arabitol and salicin for growth. Flexirubin-type pigments were produced by strain IHBB 10212. The 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed relatedness of strain IHBB 10212 to Chryseobacterium polytrichastri DSM 26899 (97.43 %), Chryseobacterium greenlandense CIP 110007 (97.29 %) and Chryseobacterium aquaticum KCTC 12483 (96.80 %). Iso-C15 : 0 and summed feature 3 (C16 : 1ω7c/C16 : 1ω6c) constituted the major cellular fatty acids. The polar lipids present were six unidentified aminolipids, one unidentified phospholipid and three unidentified lipids. MK-6 was identified as the major quinone. The DNA G+C content was 34.08  mol%. Digital DNA-DNA hybridization of strain IHBB 10212 with C. polytrichastri, C. greenlandense and C. aquaticum showed values far below the prescribed thresholds of 95 % for average nucleotide identity and 70 % for the Genome-to-Genome Distance Calculator for species delineation. Based on its differences from validly published Chryseobacterium species, strain IHBB 10212 is identified as a new species, for which the proposed name is Chryseobacterium glaciei sp. nov., with IHBB 10212 as the type strain (=MTCC 12457=JCM 31156=KACC 19170).