Pseudogemmobacter bohemicus gen. nov., sp. nov., a novel taxon from the Rhodobacteraceae family isolated from heavy-metal-contaminated sludge

The creamy white to beige, aerobic, non-motile, ovoid to rod-shaped, Gram-stain-negative strain, Cd-10(T), was isolated from heavy-metal-contaminated sludge from a decantation basin of a heavy metal processing factory based on its ability to tolerate CdCl2 in the cultivation medium. In the reconstruction of its phylogeny based on 16S rRNA gene sequences, strain Cd-10(T) clustered with species of the genera Gemmobacter, Xinfangfangia, Tabrizicola and Rhodobacter within the family Rhodobacteraceae. Its 16S rRNA gene sequence exhibited 96.32% pairwise similarity to the type strain of Xinfangfangia soli, 95.3 % to that of Gemmobacter intermedius, followed by Tabrizicola fusiformis (95.10 %), Rhodobacter sediminis (94.88 %), Gemmobacter nectariphilus and Rhodobacter capsulatus (both 94.81%). The major respiratory quinone was Q-10 accompanied by Q-9, the fatty acid profile consisted predominantly of C-18:1 omega 7C, C-18:0, C-16:0 and C-16:1 omega 7c, the major polar lipids were phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylmethylethanolamine, phosphatidylcholine and diphosphatidylglycerol. An analysis of the percentage of conserved proteins deduced from draft or complete genomic sequences of strain Cd-10(T) and representatives of its closest relatives suggested that strain Cd-10(T) is a member of a novel genus within the Rhodobacteraceae family for which we propose the name Pseudogemmobacter. Strain Cd-10(T) (=DSM 103618(T)=NCCB 100645(T)) is the type strain of Pseudogemmobacter bohemicus gen. nov., sp. nov., the type species of the genus Pseudogemmobacter gen. nov.