Chitinophaga deserti sp. nov., isolated from desert soil.

An aerobic bacterial strain, designated XJ-2, was isolated from a soil sample collected from Gurbantunggut Sandy Desert in PR China. Cells of strain XJ-2 were Gram-stain-negative, non-motile, rod-shaped and non-spore-forming. The new isolate grew well at 10-37 °C (optimum, 28-30 °C), pH 6.0-11.0 (pH 7.0) and 0-1 % (w/v) NaCl (0 %). The 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain XJ-2 showed the highest similarity to that of Chitinophaga rhizosphaerae T16R-86 (99.0 %), followed by Chitinophaga barathri YLT18 (97.0 %), Chitinophagahumicola Ktm-2 (96.7 %) and Chitinophaga niabensis JS13-10 (96.4 %). The major menaquinone of strain XJ-2 was menaquinone 7 and the predominant fatty acids (>5 %) were iso-C15 : 0, C16 : 1ω5c and iso-C17 : 0 3-OH. The polar lipids consisted of phosphatidylethanolamine, an unidentified glycolipid, three unidentified aminolipids and five unidentified lipids. The genome size was 6.33 Mb, comprising 5268 predicted genes with a G+C content of 41.5 mol%. The DNA G+C content was 50.5 mol% based on total genome calculations. The average nucleotide identity and the digital DNA-DNA hybridization values between strain XJ-2 and strain T16R-86 were 79.6 and 22.3 %, respectively. DNA-DNA relatedness between strain XJ-2 and strain YLT18 was 17.0 %. Based on the physiological, biochemical and chemotaxonomic characteristics, strain XJ-2 represents a novel species of the genus Chitinophaga, for which the name Chitinophagadeserti sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is XJ-2 (KCTC 62443=CCTCC AB 2018019).