Pedobacter ghigonii sp. nov., Isolated from the Microbiota of the Planarian Schmidtea mediterranea

The planarian S. mediterranea is a platyhelminth with worldwide distribution that can regenerate any part of its body after amputation and has the capacity to eliminate large spectrum human bacterial pathogens. Surprisingly, microbiota remains poorly investigated. Using culturomics strategy study component planarians, we isolated new strain, Marseille-Q2390, which characterized taxono-genomic approach associates phenotypic assays genome sequencing analysis. Strain Marseille-Q2390 exhibited 16S rRNA sequence similarity 99.36% Pedobacter kyungheensis strain THG-T17T, closest phylogenetic neighbor. It white-pigmented, Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium. grows in aerobic conditions belongs family Sphingobacteriaceae. 5,919,359 bp-long, G + C content 40.3%. By comparing other closely related strains, highest Orthologous Average Nucleotide Identity (Ortho-ANI) digital DNA-DNA hybridization (dDDH) values were 85.71% 30.50%, respectively, found soli 15-51T. We conclude Marseille-Q2390T sufficiently different from nearby species be classified within for propose name ghigonii sp. nov.