Metabacillus schmidteae sp. nov., Cultivated from Planarian Schmidtea mediterranea Microbiota

Taxonogenomics combines phenotypic assays and genomic analysis as a means of characterizing novel strains. We used this strategy to study Marseille-P9898T strain, an aerobic, motile, Gram-negative, spore-forming, and rod-shaped bacterium isolated from planarian Schmidtea mediterranea. Marseille-P9898T is catalase-positive and oxidase-negative. The major fatty acids detected are 12-methyl-tetradecanoic acid, 13-methyl-tetradecanoic acid, and hexadecanoic acid. Marseille-P9898T strain shared more than 98% sequence similarity with the Metabacillus niabensis strain 4T19T (98.99%), Metabacillus halosaccharovorans strain E33T (98.75%), Metabacillus malikii strain NCCP-662T (98.19%), and Metabacillus litoralis strain SW-211T (97.15%). Marseille-P9898 strain belongs to Metabacillus genus. Genomic analysis revealed the highest similarities with Ortho-ANI and dDDH, 85.76% with Metabacillus halosaccharovorans, and 34.20% with Bacillus acidicola, respectively. These results show that the Marseille-P9898T strain is a novel bacterial species from Metabacillus genus, for which we propose the name of Metabacillus schmidteae sp. nov. (Type strain Marseille-P9898T = CSUR P9898T = DSM 111480T).