Thiobacillus thiophilus sp. nov., a chemolithoautotrophic, thiosulfate-oxidizing bacterium isolated from contaminated aquifer sediments.

Strain D24TN(T) was enriched and isolated from sediment collected from a tar oil-contaminated aquifer at a former gasworks site located in Duesseldorf-Flingern, Germany. Cells of strain D24TN(T) were rod-shaped, non-spore-forming and stained Gram-negative. Thiosulfate was used as an electron donor. The organism was obligately chemolithoautotrophic and facultatively anaerobic, and grew with either oxygen or nitrate as electron acceptor. Growth was observed at pH values between 6.3 and 8.7 and at temperatures of -2 to 30 degrees C; optimum growth occurred at pH 7.5-8.3 and 25-30 degrees C. The DNA G+C content was 61.5 mol%. On the basis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strain D24TN(T) clustered in the Betaproteobacteria and was most closely related to Thiobacillus denitrificans (97.6 %) and Thiobacillus thioparus (97.5 %). Based on the phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic data, strain D24TN(T) represents a novel species of the genus Thiobacillus, for which the name Thiobacillus thiophilus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is D24TN(T) (=DSM 19892(T)=JCM 15047(T)).