Methylobacterium planium sp. nov., isolated from a lichen sample.

A novel bacterial strain, designated YIM 132548, was isolated from Lepraria sp. lichen collected from Yunnan province, south-west PR China. The organism was Gram-stain negative, aerobic and methylotrophic. The cell was catalase positive and oxidase negative, asporogenous, rod-shaped and motile with three polar flagella. The strain could grow at 15-30 °C (optimum, 20 °C), at pH 6.0-9.0 (optimum, pH 7.0) and does not grow in the presence of NaCl. According to the 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strain YIM 132548 showed high levels of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity with Methylobacterium soli YIM 48816 (97.6%) and Methylobacterium durans NBRC 112876 (97.3%), less than 97.0% with other validly named type strains of the genus Methylobacterium. Ubiquinone Q-10 was the predominant respiratory ubiquinone. The predominant cellular fatty acid was identified as summed feature 8 (Cω7c). The major polar lipids were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylcholine. The DNA G + C content of the draft genome sequence is 70.2 mol%. The average nucleotide identity and digital DNA-DNA hybridizations values of strain YIM 132548 with M. soli YIM 48816 and M. durans NBRC 112876 were 87.0% and 82.0%, 40.6% and 27.2% based on draft genome sequences, respectively. On the basis of phylogenetic, chemotaxonomic, phenotypic and genomic data, strain YIM 132548 is concluded to represent a novel species of the genus Methylobacterium, for which the name Methylobacterium planium sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is YIM 132548 (= CGMCC 1.17323 = NBRC 114056).