Pedobacter lignilitoris sp. Nov., isolated from wood falls

A Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, non-motile and rod-shaped bacterial strain, designated W-WS13^T, was isolated from wood falls collected around Wando, an island in the South Sea of South Korea, and subjected to a polyphasic taxonomic study. Strain W-WS13^T grew optimally at 30 °C, at pH 7.5 and in the presence of 0.5% NaCl. A neighbour-joining phylogenetic tree based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain W-WS13^T belonged to the genus Pedobacter, clustering robustly with the type strain of Pedobacter arcticus, sharing 95.9% sequence similarity. Strain W-WS13^T exhibited 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity of 90.1–95.6% to the type strains of the other species of the genus Pedobacter. Strain W-WS13^T contained MK-7 as the predominant menaquinone and iso- C_{15: 0}, summed feature 3 (C_{16: 1}ω7c and/or C_{16: 1}ω6c) and iso-C_{17: 0} 3-OH as the major fatty acids. The major polar lipid detected in strain W-WS13^T was phosphatidylethanolamine. The DNA G+C content of strain W-WS13^T was 36.9 mol%. Phylogenetic distinctiveness and differential phenotypic properties of strain W-WS13^T revealed that the novel strain is separated from recognized species of the genus Pedobacter. On the basis of the data presented, strain W-WS13^T is considered to represent a novel species of the genus Pedobacter, for which the name Pedobacter lignilitoris sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is W-WS13^T (=KCTC 42500^T=CECT 8725^T).