Melandré van Lill , Stephanus N. Venter , Esther K. Muema , Marike Palmer , Wai Y. Chan , Chrizelle W. Beukes , Emma T. Steenkamp
{"title":"SeqCode facilitates naming of South African rhizobia left in limbo","authors":"Melandré van Lill , Stephanus N. Venter , Esther K. Muema , Marike Palmer , Wai Y. Chan , Chrizelle W. Beukes , Emma T. Steenkamp","doi":"10.1016/j.syapm.2024.126504","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>South Africa is well-known for the diversity of its legumes and their nitrogen-fixing bacterial symbionts. However, in contrast to their plant partners, remarkably few of these microbes (collectively referred to as rhizobia) from South Africa have been characterised and formally described. This is because the rules of the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes (ICNP) are at odds with South Africa's National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act and its associated regulations. The ICNP requires that a culture of the proposed type strain for a novel bacterial species be deposited in two international culture collections and be made available upon request without restrictions, which is not possible under South Africa’s current national regulations. Here, we describe seven new <em>Mesorhizobium</em> species obtained from root nodules of <em>Vachellia karroo</em>, an iconic tree legume distributed across various biomes in southern Africa. For this purpose, 18 rhizobial isolates were delineated into putative species using genealogical concordance, after which their plausibility was explored with phenotypic characters and average genome relatedness. For naming these new species, we employed the rules of the recently published Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes described from Sequence Data (SeqCode), which utilizes genome sequences as nomenclatural types. The work presented in this study thus provides an illustrative example of how the SeqCode allows for a standardised approach for naming cultivated organisms for which the deposition of a type strain in international culture collections is currently problematic.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":22124,"journal":{"name":"Systematic and applied microbiology","volume":"47 2","pages":"Article 126504"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0723202024000183/pdfft?md5=885b47be2491e2918543c1a10b18b6fa&pid=1-s2.0-S0723202024000183-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Systematic and applied microbiology","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0723202024000183","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"BIOTECHNOLOGY & APPLIED MICROBIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
South Africa is well-known for the diversity of its legumes and their nitrogen-fixing bacterial symbionts. However, in contrast to their plant partners, remarkably few of these microbes (collectively referred to as rhizobia) from South Africa have been characterised and formally described. This is because the rules of the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes (ICNP) are at odds with South Africa's National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act and its associated regulations. The ICNP requires that a culture of the proposed type strain for a novel bacterial species be deposited in two international culture collections and be made available upon request without restrictions, which is not possible under South Africa’s current national regulations. Here, we describe seven new Mesorhizobium species obtained from root nodules of Vachellia karroo, an iconic tree legume distributed across various biomes in southern Africa. For this purpose, 18 rhizobial isolates were delineated into putative species using genealogical concordance, after which their plausibility was explored with phenotypic characters and average genome relatedness. For naming these new species, we employed the rules of the recently published Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes described from Sequence Data (SeqCode), which utilizes genome sequences as nomenclatural types. The work presented in this study thus provides an illustrative example of how the SeqCode allows for a standardised approach for naming cultivated organisms for which the deposition of a type strain in international culture collections is currently problematic.
期刊介绍:
Systematic and Applied Microbiology deals with various aspects of microbial diversity and systematics of prokaryotes. It focuses on Bacteria and Archaea; eukaryotic microorganisms will only be considered in rare cases. The journal perceives a broad understanding of microbial diversity and encourages the submission of manuscripts from the following branches of microbiology: