We performed taxonomic studies on a psychrotolerant strain, designated PB01T, isolated from an Antarctic iceberg. The cells of strain PB01T were Gram-stain-positive, strictly aerobic, white–yellow and rod-shaped. The results of 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis revealed that strain PB01T was closely related to Psychrobacillus psychrodurans DSM 11713T (99.19% similarity), Psy-chrobacillus psychrotolerans DSM 11706T (98.91%) and Psychrobacillus insolitus DSM 5T (98.85%). Despite high 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, the degrees of DNA–DNA relatedness between strain PB01 T and its three closest phylogenetic neighbours were 62.4±7.3 % for P. psychrodurans DSM 11713T, 61.1±5.4 % for P. psychrotolerans DSM 11706T and 56.1±6.9 % for P. insolitus DSM 5T. The predominant cellular fatty acids were anteiso-C15: 0, iso-C15: 0 and C16: 1ω7с-OH. Menaquinone-8 was the major respiratory quinone, and phosphatidylethanolamine was the major polar lipid. The DNA G+C content of strain PB01T calculated from the complete genome sequence was 36.0 mol%. Based on the phenotypic, chemotaxonomic, genomic and phylogenetic data obtained in the present study, we conclude that strain PB01T represents a novel species of the genus Psychrobacillus, for which we propose the name Psychrobacillus glaciei sp. nov. The type strain is PB01T (=CECT 9792T=KCTC 43041T).
This work was supported by the Intelligent Synthetic Biology Centre of the Global Frontier Project (grant number 2014M3A6A8066439), by the National Research Foundation of Korea (grant number 2017R1A2B4011899), and by the Priority Research Centres Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (grant number 2019R1A6A11051471).
