Sphingomonas montana sp. nov., isolated from a soil sample from the Tanggula Mountain in the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau

An orange pigmented, Gram-staining negative, aerobic, motile, rod-shaped bacterium isolated from a soil from the Tanggula Mountain, China was studied using a polyphasic approach. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, strain W16RD^T was found to be closely related to Sphingomonas prati DSM 103336^T (99%), Sphingomonas fennica DSM 13665^T (97.21%), followed by Sphingomonas laterariae DSM 25432^T (96.44%), Sphingomonas haloaromaticamans CGMCC 1.10206 ^T (96.36%) and Sphingomonas formosensis DSM 24164^T (96.06%). The strain was found to be catalase and oxidase positive and was found to grow optimally at temperatures of 20-25 °C, pH 8 and tolerated NaCl concentration up to 1% (w/v). The major fatty acids identified were summed feature eight comprising C_18:1 ω 7c and/or C_18:1 ω 6c (39.2%), summed feature three comprising of C_16:1 ω7c and/or C_16:1 ω6c (36.7%) and C_16:0 (7.0%). The polar lipids detected were phosphatidylcholine, sphingoglycolipid, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidyldimethylethanolamine, phosphatidylmonomethylethanolamine, and three unidentified lipids. The strain possessed ubiquinone-10 (Q-10) as the predominant respiratory quinone. Along with other distinguishing characteristics, we also describe the draft genome of strain W16RD^T. The final assembled draft genome sequence is 3,722,743 bp with 3390 coding and 48 RNA (45 tRNA and 3 rRNA) genes. The DNA G+C content of the genomic DNA was determined to be 67%. The DNA-DNA relatedness value between the strain W16RD^T and its closest phylogenetic relatives S. prati DSM 103336^T, S. fennica DSM 13665^T, S. laterariae DSM 25432^T, and S. haloaromaticamans CGMCC 1.10206^T were 52.17, 47.60, 20.93 and 17.09% respectively. The strain W16RD^T could be distinguished genotypically and phenotypically from the recognized species belonging to the genus Sphingomonas and thus represents a novel species, for which the name Sphingomonas montana sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is W16RD^T (=CGMCC 1.15646^T = DSM 103337^T).