Streptomyces lunalinharesii sp. nov., a chitinolytic streptomycete isolated from cerrado soil in Brazil

1 Instituto de Microbiologia Prof. Paulo de Góes, Universidade do Brasil, UFRJ, CCS, Bloco I, Ilha do Fundão, Rio de Janeiro 21941-590, Brazil 2 Centro de Ciências e da Saúde, Universidade Severino Sombra, USS, Av. Expedicionário Oswaldo de Almeida Ramos -280, Centro, Vassouras, Rio de Janeiro 27700-000, Brazil Correspondence Rodrigo Fonseca de Souza rsouza.rlk{at}terra.com.br A novel chitinolytic actinomycete isolated from a Brazilian cerrado soil, designated strain RCQ1071 T , was assigned to the genus Streptomyces on the basis of chemical and morphological characteristics. The almost-complete nucleotide sequence of the 16S rRNA gene of strain RCQ1071 T was determined and also placed this strain in the genus Streptomyces . Phylogenetic analyses of 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain RCQ1071 T formed a long branch in a group related to Streptomyces albulus , sharing approximately 98 % sequence similarity. Levels of DNA–DNA relatedness between strain RCQ1071 T and members of this group, namely S. albulus DSM 40492 T , Streptomyces noursei DSM 40635 T and Streptomyces yunnanensis DSM 41793 T , were 38.3, 27.8 and 46 %, respectively, strongly indicating that strain RCQ1071 T was not a member of any of these species. The relatively long branch length within a stable clade together with the phenotypic data strongly supported that strain RCQ1071 T represented a novel species. Based on the combination of physiological, phylogenetic and genomic data, strain RCQ1071 T is suggested to represent a novel species of the genus Streptomyces , for which the name Streptomyces lunalinharesii sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is RCQ1071 T (=ATCC BAA-1231 T =CIP 108852 T =DSM 41876 T ). The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain RCQ1071 T is DQ094838 . A table detailing differential phenotypic properties between strain RCQ1071 T and chitinolytic Streptomyces species is available as supplementary material with the online version of this paper.