A report on 38 unrecorded bacterial species in Korea in the class Gammaproteobacteria

Abstract

During an investigation of indigenous prokaryotic species in the Republic of Korea, a total of 38 bacterial strains belonging to the class Gammaproteobacteria were isolated from diverse environments. Samples were collected from soil, seawater, sand, sedimentary soil, rabbit feces, rat intestines, marine wetland, and tidal flats. The strains were identified to the species level using the high 16S rRNA gene sequences and showed high similarity (>98.7%) with the closest bacterial species and formed a robust clade in the neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree; it was determined that each strain belonged to independent, predefined bacteria species within the class Gammaproteobacteria. The 38 strains of Gammaproteobacteria analyzed in this study have not been reported in the Republic of Korea. Therefore, this study describes 20 genera of 13 families in 8 orders: Aeromonadales, Alteromonadales, Cellvibrionales, Enterobacterales, Lysobacterales, Oceanospirillales, Pseudomonadales, and Vibrionales. For each species, we describe Gram reaction, strain ID, isolation source, colony and cell morphology, cultural, physiological, and basic biochemical characteristics.