'Jeotgalicoccus saudimassiliensis' sp. nov., a new bacterial species isolated from air samples in the urban environment of Makkah, Saudi Arabia.

We report here the main characteristics of 'Jeotgalicoccus saudimassiliensis' strain 13MG44_airT (CSUR P1221), a new species of the Jeotgalicoccus genus that was isolated from air samples in the city environment of Makkah, Saudi Arabia, during the pilgrim period of Hajj 2012.

As a part of a wider culturomics [1] and metagenomics study [2] in Saudi Arabia, we isolated a new bacterium, strain 13MG44_airT, from two air samples in the urban environment of Makkah, Saudi Arabia, during the pilgrim period of Hajj 2012. For each air sample, a volume of 1 m3 was collected with a FCC-IV biological air sampler (AES Laboratories, Combourg, France) mounted with a nutrient agar plate containing the antifungal agent amphotericin (Majed Al-Buqami Co. BMC, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The strain 13MG44_airT was cultured in 5% sheep’s blood–enriched Columbia agar (bioMérieux, Marcy l’Etoile, France) for 2 days in an aerobic atmosphere at 37°C. Growth was observed in the range 0 to 15% NaCl with an optimum at 5% NaCl in aerobic conditions, and no growth occurred in anaerobic conditions. Strain 13MG44_airT colonies on Columbia agar were opaque, round and white-grey in color, and they varied between 1.2 to 2.7 mm in diameter. The strain 13MG44_airT is a Gram-positive, aerobic, nonmotile, catalase- and oxidase-positive, coccus-shaped organism. No identification was obtained for the strain 13MG44_airT using our systematic matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) screening on a MicroFlex spectrometer (Bruker Daltonics, Bremen, Germany).

The complete 16S rRNA gene was sequenced using fD1-rP2 primers as previously described and a 3130-XL sequencer (Applied Biosciences, Saint Aubin, France) [3]. The strain 13MG44_airT exhibited a 98.5% sequence similarity with Jeotgalicoccus psychrophilus (JQ266291) which was the phylogenetically closest species with standing in nomenclature (Fig. 1). Consequently it putatively classifies the strain 13MG44_airT as a new member of the genus Jeotgalicoccus within the family Staphylococcaceae in the phylum Firmicutes. The genus Jeotgalicoccus was first described by Yoon et al. in 2003 by the isolation of Jeotgalicoccus halotolerans and Jeotgalicoccus psychrophilus in a traditional Korean fermented seafood [4]. The genus Jeotgalicoccus was later emended by Liu et al. by the isolation of Jeotgalicoccus nanhaiensis from intertidal sediment [5]. Jeotgalicoccus species were detected as inhabitants of a bovine teat canal [6], and recently Jeotgalicoccus aerolatus was isolated from bioaerosol samples from a poultry-fattening industry and Jeotgalicoccus coquinae was isolated from coquina, a food supplement for female ducks used in a duck-fattening farm [7].

FIG. 1

Phylogenetic tree highlighting position of ‘Jeotgalicoccus saudimassiliensis’ relative to other phylogenetically close members of Jeotgalicoccus genus. Numbers at nodes are percentages of bootstrap values obtained by repeating analysis 500 times to generate majority consensus tree. Scale bar represents 1% nucleotide sequence divergence.

Strain 13MG44_airT exhibited a 16S rRNA gene sequence divergence of >1.3% with J. psychrophilus, the closest related species with standing in nomenclature, which classifies it as a new representative of the Jeotgalicoccus genus isolated from air samples in the urban environment of Makkah. As a result, we propose the creation of ‘Jeotgalicoccus saudimassiliensis’ sp. nov., and the strain 13MG44_air as the type strain.

MALDI-TOF MS spectrum

The MALDI-TOF MS spectrum of strain 13MG44_airT is available online (http://www.mediterranee-infection.com/article.php?laref=256&titre=urms-database).

Nucleotide sequence accession number

The 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain 13MG44_airT was deposited in GenBank under accession number HG931342.1.

Deposit in a culture collection

Strain 13MG44_airT was deposited in the Collection de Souches de l’Unité des Rickettsies (CSUR, WDCM 875) under number P1221.