Desertibaculum subflavum gen. nov., sp. nov., a novel member of the family Sneathiellaceae isolated from the Kumtag Desert soil

A novel rod-shaped bacterium, designated as strain SYSU D60015^T that formed yellowish colonies was isolated from a sandy soil collected from the Kumtag Desert in Xinjiang, China. Cells were Gram-stain-negative, oxidase-positive, catalase-negative and motile with a single polar flagellum. Growth optimum occurred between 28 and 37 °C, pH 7.0 and with 0–0.5% (W/V) NaCl. The predominant cellular fatty acids (> 5%) were summed feature 8 (C_18:1 ω7c and/or C_18:1 ω6c), C_19:0 cyclo ω8c, C_18:1 ω7c 11-methyl and C_16:0. The polar lipid profile contained one phosphatidylethanolamine, one diphosphatidylglycerol, one phosphatidylglycerol, one unidentified phospholipid, three unidentified aminolipids, two unidentified aminophospholipids and seven unidentified lipids. The only respiratory quinone was ubiquinone-10. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence phylogenetic analysis, strain SYSU D60015^T was found to form a distinct linage within the family Sneathiellaceae, and had 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities of 90.8% to Taonella mepensis H1^T, and 90.2% to Ferrovibrio denitrificans S3^T. The genome of SYSU D60015^T was 5.66 Mb in size with 68.2% of DNA G + C content. The low digital DNA-DNA hybridization (dDDH, 18.0%), average nucleotide identity (ANI, 77.5%) and amino acid identity (AAI, 56.0%) values between SYSU D60015^T and Ferrovibrio terrae K5^T indicated that SYSU D60015^T might represent a distinct genus. Based on the phylogenetic, phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and genomic data, we propose Desertibaculum subflavum gen. nov., sp. nov. as a novel species of a new genus within the family Sneathiellaceae. The type strain is SYSU D60015^T (= NBRC 112952^T = CGMCC 1.16256^T).