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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC AND EVOLUTIONARY MICROBIOLOGY logo International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology

Volume 75, Issue 5

Unexpected 16S rRNA heterogeneity in ‘’ and reclassification as subsp. subsp. nov. Open Access

Abstract

Strain MC is a strictly anaerobic, homoacetogenic bacterium with the ability to utilize methyl chloride as the sole energy source. It was tentatively assigned to the genus as ‘’. Due to sequence ambiguities, it was not possible to determine the 16S rRNA gene sequence of this strain by direct sequencing of a PCR-amplified DNA segment. Whole-genome sequencing revealed significant heterogeneity amongst the five rRNA operons detected in this strain, with maximum sequence differences between the individual 16S rRNA genes exceeding 1.4%, compared to <0.8% in related species. Genome comparisons identified strain MC as most closely related to MuME1, with a digital DNA–DNA hybridization value of 71.9% and an average nucleotide identity score of 96.59%, indicating that the strains belong to the same species. Both strains share the ability to utilize malate, a key feature of , but differ in the utilization of methanol and glucose. Chemotaxonomic analyses also revealed distinct fatty acid and polar lipid patterns. Based on these findings, we propose the classification of strain ‘’ MC (=DSM 11527=NBRC 117038) as subsp. subsp. nov. This automatically establishes subsp. subsp. nov., with MuME1 (=DSM 4132=ATCC 51201) as the type strain.

  • Received:
  • Accepted:
  • Published Online:
Keyword(s): evolution , homoacetogen , methylotroph , ribosome and SSU rRNA
Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Leibniz Institute DSMZ
    • Principal Award Recipient: StefanSpring
© 2025 The Authors
  • This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This article was made open access via a Publish and Read agreement between the Microbiology Society and the corresponding author’s institution.
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2025-05-08
2026-01-19

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Unexpected 16S rRNA heterogeneity in ‘Acetobacterium dehalogenans’ and reclassification as Acetobacterium malicum subsp. dehalogenans subsp. nov.
Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 75, 006783 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1099/ijsem.0.006783
/content/journal/ijsem/10.1099/ijsem.0.006783
/content/journal/ijsem/10.1099/ijsem.0.006783
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