Streptomyces albidocamelliae sp. nov., an endophytic actinomycete isolated from the leaves of Camellia oleifera.

A novel actinobacterium strain, HUAS 14-6, was isolated from the healthy leaves of Camellia oleifera collected from Changde City, Hunan Province, China. Strain HUAS 14-6 produced tight spiral spore chains consisting of oval or spherical spores with a smooth surface. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis revealed that strain HUAS 14-6 belonged to the genus Streptomyces and shared highest similarity to Streptomyces bungoensis DSM 41781 (99.72%). Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated strain HUAS 14-6 was in a clade with S. bungoensis DSM 41781. However, the ANIm and dDDH between strain HUAS 14-6 and S. bungoensis DSM 41781 were 88.16% and 31.2%, respectively, far less than the species-level thresholds. Phylogenetic trees based on the five housekeeping genes (atpD, gyrB, recA, rpoB and trpB) showed that strain HUAS 14-6 formed a separate branch, indicating that this strain could belong to a potential new species. Pairwise MLSA distances between strain HUAS 14-6 and all type strains exhibiting 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities of ≥98.7% to it were much higher than the maximum range of 0.014 recommended for delineating a new Streptomyces species. Based on polyphasic taxonomic study, HUAS 14-6 represents a novel species within the genus Streptomyces for which the name Streptomyces albidocamelliae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is HUAS 14-6 (=MCCC 1K08365=JCM 35920).