ORIGINAL PAPER Aquamicrobium terrae sp. nov., isolated from the polluted soil near a chemical factory Zhi-Guo Wu • Fang Wang • Cheng-Gang Gu • Yin-Ping Zhang • Zong-Zheng Yang • Xiao-Wei Wu • Xin Jiang Received: 19 December 2013 / Accepted: 9 April 2014 / Published online: 1 May 2014 Ó Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014 Abstract A Gram-negative, aerobic, non-motile bac- terial strain hun6 T isolated from the polluted soil near a chemical factory in northern Nanjing, China was investigated to clarify its taxonomic position. Growth of strain hun6 T occurred between 10 and 45 °C (optimum, 30 °C) and between pH 6.0 and 8.0 (opti- mum, pH 7.0). No growth occurred at NaCl concentra- tions greater than 5 % (w/v). The 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that strain hun6 T belongs to the genus Aquamicrobium. The sequence similarities of strain hun6 T to other type strains of Aquamicrobium genus were all below 98.5 %. The presence of ubiqui- none-10, the predominant fatty acid summed feature 8 (C 18:1 x7c and/or C 18:1 x6c) and C 19:0 cyclo x8c,a polar lipid pattern with phosphatidylglycerol, phospha- tidylcholine, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidyleth- anolamine and phophatidylmonomethylethanoamine were in accord with the characteristics of the genus Aquamicrobium. The G?C content of the genomic DNA was determined to be 63.5 mol%. The results of DNA–DNA hybridization, physiological and biochem- ical tests and chemotaxonomic properties allowed genotypic and phenotypic differentiation of strain hun6 T from all known Aquamicrobium species. There- fore, strain hun6 T can be assigned to a new species of this genus for which the name Aquamicrobium terrae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is hun6 T (= CICC 10733 T = DSM 27865 T ). Keywords Aquamicrobium terrae sp. nov. Á Polyphasic taxonomy Á 16S rRNA Introduction The genus Aquamicrobium was initially proposed by Bambauer et al. (1998) for a Gram-negative bacte- rium, isolated from waste water, which was able to degrade thiophene-2-carboxylate. At the time of Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10482-014-0174-8) contains supple- mentary material, which is available to authorized users. Z.-G. Wu Á F. Wang (&) Á C.-G. Gu Á Y.-P. Zhang Á X. Jiang (&) State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, People’s Republic of China e-mail: wangfang@issas.ac.cn X. Jiang e-mail: jiangxin@issas.ac.cn Z.-G. Wu e-mail: wzhg123@hotmail.com Z.-G. Wu Á Z.-Z. Yang Tianjin Key Laboratory of Pulp & Paper, Tianjin University of Science & Technology, Tianjin 300457, People’s Republic of China X.-W. Wu E-TECH Energy Technology Development Co.,Ltd, Tianjin 300384, People’s Republic of China 123 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (2014) 105:1131–1137 DOI 10.1007/s10482-014-0174-8 Author's personal copy