A report of 26 unrecorded bacterial species in Korea, isolated from urban streams of the Han River watershed in 2018

Owing to a distinct environmental regime and anthropogenic effects, freshwater bacterial communities of urban streams are considered to be different from those of large freshwater lakes and rivers. To obtain unrecorded, freshwater bacterial species in Korea, water and sediment samples were collected from various urban streams of the Han River watershed in 2018. After plating the freshwater samples on R2A agar, approximately 1000 bacterial strains were isolated from the samples as single colonies and identified using 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses. A total of 26 strains, with >98.7% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity with validly published bacterial species but not reported in Korea, were determined to be unrecorded bacterial species in Korea. The unrecorded bacterial strains were phylogenetically diverse and belonged to four phyla, six classes, 12 orders, 16 families, and 21 genera. At the generic level, the unreported species were assigned to Nocardioides, Streptomyces, Microbacterium, Kitasatospora, Herbiconiux, Corynebacterium, and Microbacterium of the class Actinobacteria; Paenibacillus and Bacillus of the class Bacilli; Caulobacter, Methylobacterium, Novosphingobium, and Porphyrobacter of the class Alphaproteobacteria; Aquabacterium, Comamonas, Hydrogenophaga, Laribacter, Rivicola, Polynucleobacter, and Vogesella of the class Betaproteobacteria; Arcobacter of the class Epsilonproteobacteria; and Flavobacterium of the class Flavobacteriia. The details of the 26 unreported species, including Gram reaction, colony and cell morphology, biochemical properties, and phylogenetic position are also provided in the strain descriptions.