Variibacter gotjawalensis gen. nov., sp. nov., isolated from soil of a lava forest.

A novel bacterial strain designated GJW-30(T) was isolated from soil of the lava forest, Gotjawal, located in Aewol, Jeju, Korea. Strain GJW-30(T) was found to be strictly aerobic, Gram-negative and to form pleomorphic, non-motile rods and white colonies on R2A agar. The major fatty acids were identified as C18:1ω7c, C16:0 and C17:0, the predominant isoprenoid quinone as Q-10, the polar lipids as diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylcholine, an unidentified aminolipid and an unidentified lipid. The cell-wall sugar pattern of strain GJW-30(T) was found to be composed of glucose, ribose and rhamnose and meso-DAP as the diagnostic diamino acid in the cell-wall peptidoglycan. The DNA G+C content of strain GJW-30(T) is 62.2 mol%. Phylogenetic analysis, based on 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities, showed that strain GJW-30(T) forms a deep branch within the order Rhizobiales, sharing the highest level of sequence homology with Bradyrhizobium oligotrophicum LMG 10732(T) (93.6 %). On the basis of the phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic characteristics, strain GJW-30(T) is considered to represent a novel genus and species, for which the name Variibacter gotjawalensis gen. nov., sp. nov. (the type strain is GJW-30(T) = KCTC 32391(T) = CECT 8514(T) = LMG 28093(T)) is proposed.