Abstract

A novel bacterial strain, designated YIM 132548  T , was isolated from Lepraria sp. lichen collected from Yunnan province, south-west PR China. The organism was Gram-stain negative, aerobic and methylotrophic. The cell was catalase positive and oxidase negative, asporogenous, rod-shaped and motile with three polar flagella. The strain could grow at 15–30 °C (optimum, 20 °C), at pH 6.0–9.0 (optimum, pH 7.0) and does not grow in the presence of NaCl. According to the 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strain YIM 132548  T showed high levels of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity with Methylobacterium soli YIM 48816  T (97.6%) and Methylobacterium durans NBRC 112876  T (97.3%), less than 97.0% with other validly named type strains of the genus Methylobacterium . Ubiquinone Q-10 was the predominant respiratory ubiquinone. The predominant cellular fatty acid was identified as summed feature 8 (C 18:1 ω 7 c ). The major polar lipids were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylcholine. The DNA G + C content of the draft genome sequence is 70.2 mol%. The average nucleotide identity and digital DNA–DNA hybridizations values of strain YIM 132548  T with M . soli YIM 48816  T and M . durans NBRC 112876  T were 87.0% and 82.0%, 40.6% and 27.2% based on draft genome sequences, respectively. On the basis of phylogenetic, chemotaxonomic, phenotypic and genomic data, strain YIM 132548  T is concluded to represent a novel species of the genus Methylobacterium , for which the name Methylobacterium planium sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is YIM 132548  T (= CGMCC 1.17323  T  = NBRC 114056  T ).