sp. nov., isolated from phenanthrene-degrading consortium enriched from Antarctic soil.

A novel bacterium, designated strain ANT13_2, was isolated from a phenanthrene-degrading consortium enriched from a soil sample collected near the Great Wall Station located in the southwestern area of King George Island, Antarctica. Following a polyphasic taxonomic study, a novel species belonging to the genus was described. The strain was a Gram-stain-positive bacterium that exhibited a rod-coccus growth cycle. Strain ANT13_2 grew aerobically at an optimum temperature of 20-25 °C and at pH 7.0-8.0. Ribose, arabinose and glucose were detected as whole-cell sugars. The predominant menaquinone was MK-9. The diagnostic phospholipids were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol and an unidentified phospholipid. The predominant cellular fatty acids were anteiso-C (67.7 %) and anteiso-C (11.2 %). The DNA G+C content of the genomic DNA was 60.6 mol%. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strain ANT13_2 showed the highest similarities to SPC26 (98.9 %) followed by Lz1y (98.4 %), DSM 20167 (98.3%) and KGN15 (97.9 %). The average nucleotide identity values between strain ANT13_2 and the type strains of SPC26 and Lz1y were 73.8 and 77.5 %, respectively, which are well below the 95-96 % species circumscription threshold. On the basis of this polyphasic taxonomic study, strain ANT13_2 is proposed to represent a novel species to be named sp. nov. The type strain is ANT13_2 (=TBRC 11756=NBRC 114615).