A report of 31 unrecorded bacterial species in South Korea belonging to the class Gammaproteobacteria

Abstract

Microorganisms, including prokaryotes, are estimated to occupy more than approximately 60% of total biomass on earth and are most important organisms to sustain ecological system on earth. They are currently being utilized as the most valuable resources in biotechnology and demands of novel and useful microorganisms are estimated to increase in the futures due to their high economic values. Nevertheless, majority of microorganisms existing in nature has been known to be uncultured in laboratory, because the current cultivation methods can cultivate only small fraction (<0.1%) of microbial cells (Delong et al., 1989; Giovannoni et al., 1990). Since the value on biodiversity is becoming important increasingly, many attempts have been made to find novel microorganisms that have not been yet discovered (Connon & Giovannoni, 2002; Cho & Giovannoni, 2004; Yoon et al., 2011). At a time of writing, approximately 12,400 prokaryotic species with validly published names have been described (Parte, 2014). In 2013, we collected a variety of environmental samples in South Korea and isolated a number of novel bacterial species and unrecorded bacterial species from them. The identified bacterial species belonged to the Journal of Species Research 5(1):188-200, 2016