sp. nov., isolated from soil, exhibiting high-efficiency degradation of benzo(a)pyrene.

A Gram-negative, yellow-pigmented, aerobic and rod-shaped bacterium, designated as strain BaP3, was isolated from the soil. Strain BaP3 grew at 16-37℃ (optimum, 30 °C) and pH 6.0-8.0 (optimum, pH 7.0). Additionally, strain BaP3 could tolerate NaCl concentrations in the range 0-6 % (optimum, 1%). Moreover, strain BaP3 was motile by flagella. The phylogenetic analysis of 16S rRNA sequences showed that strain BaP3 belonged to the genus , and the sequence was most closely related to CGMCC 1.3392 and DSM 15758, with 99.66 % sequence similarity. RY24 was the next closely related species, exhibiting 99.38 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity. The DNA-DNA hybridization and average nucleotide identity values between strain BaP3 and its closely related types were below 50 and 92 %, respectively. Both results were below the cut-off for species distinction. The genomic DNA G+C content of strain BaP3 was 65.30 mol%. The predominant quinone in strain BaP3 was identified as ubiquinone Q-9. The major cellular fatty acids were summed feature 8 (C 7 and/or C 6), summed feature 3 (C 7 and/or C 6) and C. These results indicated that strain BaP3 represents a novel species in the genus . The type strain is BaP3 (CCTCC AB 2022379=JCM 35914), for which the name sp. nov. is proposed.