Psychromonas aquatilis sp. nov., isolated from seawater samples obtained in the Chilean Antarctica

A slightly beige-white pigmented, Gram-staining-negative, rod-shaped bacterium, strain M1A1T, was isolated from seawater samples obtained in Fildes Bay, Antarctica (62°12' S 58° 57' W). Phylogenetic analysis based on nearly full-length 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that the isolate shared 98.4 % 16S rRNA gene sequence identity to the type strain of Psychromonas arctica, but less than 97 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities to all other species of the genus Psychromonas. DNA-DNA hybridization with Psychromonas arctica DSM 14288T showed low values (21 %, reciprocal 27 %). The main cellular fatty acid of strain M1A1T was summed feature 3 fatty acids (C16 : 1ω7c/C16 : 1ω8c), followed by C16 : 0. Based on phylogenetic, chemotaxonomic, genomic and phenotypic analyses, we propose a novel species of the genus Psychromonas with the name Psychromonas aquatilis sp. nov. and the strain M1A1T (=CIP 111183T=CCM 8710T=LMG 29766T) as type strain.