Streptomyces tibetensis sp. nov., an actinomycete isolated from the Tibetan Plateau

A novel actinomycete, designated strain XZ 46 T , was isolated from acid sandy soil collected from the Tibetan Plateau, China. Its taxonomic position was determined using a polyphasic approach. Strain XZ 46 T shows the typical morphological and chemotaxonomic features of members of the genus Streptomyces : slightly yellow to brown substrate mycelia and grayish white to slightly yellow aerial hyphae forming cylindrical and spiny spores; meso -diaminopimelic acid in the cell wall peptidoglycan; MK-9(H 8 ), MK-9(H 4 ) and MK-9(H 2 ) as predominant menaquinones; diphosphatidylglycerol, phospatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylinositol as main polar lipids; and iso-C 15:0 , iso-C 16:0 and anteiso-C 15:0 as major cellular fatty acids. The G+C content of the draft genome sequence, consisting of 8,995,813 bp, is 71.23%. The16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that strain XZ 46 T shows high sequence similarity to Streptomyces luteogriseus NBRC 13402 T as well as forming an independent lineage clade with it in phylogenetic trees. Multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) of five housekeeping genes ( atp D, gyr B, rec A, rpo B and trp B) illustrated that Streptomyces hawaiiensis is also a very closely related taxon. However, DNA–DNA hybridization, MLSA evolutionary distance and phenotypic properties demonstrate that strain XZ 46 T can be distinguished from these phylogenetically related Streptomyces species. Therefore, it is concluded that strain XZ 46 T represents a novel species of the genus Streptomyces , for which the name Streptomyces tibetensis is sp. nov. proposed. The type strain is XZ 46 T (= CGMCC 4.7579 T = KCTC 49221 T ).