Desertibaculum subflavum gen. nov., sp. nov., a novel member of the family Sneathiellaceae isolated from the Kumtag Desert soil.

A novel rod-shaped bacterium, designated as strain SYSU D60015 that formed yellowish colonies was isolated from a sandy soil collected from the Kumtag Desert in Xinjiang, China. Cells were Gram-stain-negative, oxidase-positive, catalase-negative and motile with a single polar flagellum. Growth optimum occurred between 28 and 37 °C, pH 7.0 and with 0-0.5% (W/V) NaCl. The predominant cellular fatty acids (> 5%) were summed feature 8 (C ω7c and/or C ω6c), C cyclo ω8c, C ω7c 11-methyl and C. The polar lipid profile contained one phosphatidylethanolamine, one diphosphatidylglycerol, one phosphatidylglycerol, one unidentified phospholipid, three unidentified aminolipids, two unidentified aminophospholipids and seven unidentified lipids. The only respiratory quinone was ubiquinone-10. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence phylogenetic analysis, strain SYSU D60015 was found to form a distinct linage within the family Sneathiellaceae, and had 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities of 90.8% to Taonella mepensis H1, and 90.2% to Ferrovibrio denitrificans S3. The genome of SYSU D60015 was 5.66 Mb in size with 68.2% of DNA G + C content. The low digital DNA-DNA hybridization (dDDH, 18.0%), average nucleotide identity (ANI, 77.5%) and amino acid identity (AAI, 56.0%) values between SYSU D60015 and Ferrovibrio terrae K5 indicated that SYSU D60015 might represent a distinct genus. Based on the phylogenetic, phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and genomic data, we propose Desertibaculum subflavum gen. nov., sp. nov. as a novel species of a new genus within the family Sneathiellaceae. The type strain is SYSU D60015 (= NBRC 112952 = CGMCC 1.16256).