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 W16RDᵀ was found to be closely related to Sphingomonas prati DSM 103336ᵀ (99%), Sphingomonas fennica DSM 13665ᵀ (97.21%), followed by Sphingomonas laterariae DSM 25432ᵀ (96.44%), Sphingomonas haloaromaticamans CGMCC 1.10206 ᵀ (96.36%) and Sphingomonas formosensis DSM 24164ᵀ (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 C₁₈:₁ ω 7c and/or C₁₈:₁ ω 6c (39.2%), summed feature three comprising of C₁₆:₁ ω7c and/or C₁₆:₁ ω6c (36.7%) and C₁₆:₀ (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 W16RDᵀ. 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 W16RDᵀ and its closest phylogenetic relatives S. prati DSM 103336ᵀ, S. fennica DSM 13665ᵀ, S. laterariae DSM 25432ᵀ, and S. haloaromaticamans CGMCC 1.10206ᵀ were 52.17, 47.60, 20.93 and 17.09% respectively. The strain W16RDᵀ 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 W16RDᵀ (=CGMCC 1.15646ᵀ = DSM 103337ᵀ).