Flavobacterium indicum sp. nov., isolated from warm spring water in Assam, India

A polyphasic taxonomic approach was employed to characterize a strain designated GPTSA100-9T, which was isolated from water sampled from a warm spring. The micro-organism, comprising Gram-negative, strictly aerobic rods, could not grow on nutritionally rich media such as tryptic soy broth. Analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence (1396 nt) of strain GPTSA100-9T revealed that it is a member of the genus Flavobacterium, sharing 99.8% sequence similarity with the CFB group bacterium strain A0653 (AF236016), 93.4% with '[Flexibacter] aurantiacus subsp. excathedrus' and 93.2-92.0% with Flavobacterium saliperosum, Flavobacterium soli, Flavobacterium aquatile and Flavobacterium columnare. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 31.0 mol%. The major fatty acids of the strain grown on modified R2A agar were iso-C15:0 (18.5%), iso-C15:1 G (18.0%), summed feature 3 (iso-C15:0 2-OH and/or C16:1omega7c, 16.6%) and iso-C17:0 3-OH (9.0%). On the basis of phenotypic and genotypic characteristics, strain GPTSA100-9T represents a novel species of the genus Flavobacterium, for which the name Flavobacterium indicum sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is GPTSA100-9T (=MTCC 6936T=DSM 17447T).