Biological soil crusts are distinct habitats, harbor unique prokaryotic diversity and gave an impetus to isolate novel species. In the present study, a pink-pigmented bacterium, (OR316-6T), was isolated from biological soil crusts using oligotrophic BG11-PGY medium. Strain OR316-6T was Gram-positive, short rods, non-motile and non-spore forming. Cells were positive for catalase, oxidase and β-galactosidase and negative for most of the enzymatic activities. The major fatty acids present were C16:0, C17:0, and C16:1ω7c and contained MK-8 and MK-10 as the predominant menaquinones. The cell wall peptidoglycan was of A3β variant with L-ornithine as the diamino acid. Based on the above characteristics, strain OR316-6T was assigned to the genus Deinococcus. The phylogenetic analysis indicated that strain OR316-6T was closely related to D. aquatilis DSM 23025T with a 16S rRNA gene similarity of 99.3 % and clustered with a bootstrap value of 100 %. DNA-DNA similarity between strain OR316-6T and D. aquatilis DSM 23025T was 37.0 % indicating that strain OR316-6T was a novel species. Further, DNA fingerprinting of stains OR316-6T and D. aquatilis DSM 23035T demonstrated that both strains were related to each other with a similarity coefficient of only 0.32 and supported the species status to strain OR316-6T. In addition, phenotypic characteristics distinguished strain OR316-6T from D. aquatilis DSM 23025T. Based on the cumulative differences, strain OR316-16T exhibited with its closely related species, it was identified as a novel species and proposed the name Deinococcus oregonensis sp. nov. The type strain is D. oregonensis sp. nov. (OR316-6T = JCM 13503T = DSM 17762T).
Keywords: Biological soil crusts; Deinococcus oregonensis.