A polyphasic taxonomic study was carried out on a Gram-stain-negative and rod-shaped strain, ER-Te-42B-LightT, isolated from the tissue of a tube worm, Riftia pachyptila, collected near a deep-sea hydrothermal vent of the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the Pacific Ocean. This bacterium was capable of performing anaerobic respiration using tellurite, tellurate, selenite and orthovanadate as terminal electron acceptors. While facultatively anaerobic, it could aerobically resist tellurite, selenite and orthovanadate up to 2000, 7000 and 10000 µg ml-1, respectively, reducing each oxide to elemental forms. Nearly complete 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity related the strain to Shewanella, with 98.8 and 98.7 % similarity to Shewanella basaltis and Shewanella algicola, respectively. The dominant fatty acids were C16 : 0 and C16 : 1. The major polar lipids were phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylglycerol and MK-7 was the predominant quinone. DNA G+C content was 42.5 mol%. Computation of average nucleotide identity and digital DNA-DNA hybridization values with the closest phylogenetic neighbours of ER-Te-42B-LightT revealed genetic divergence at the species level, which was further substantiated by differences in several physiological characteristics. Based on the obtained results, this bacterium was assigned to the genus Shewanella as a new species with the name Shewanella metallivivens sp. nov., type strain ER-Te-42B-LightT (=VKM B-3580T=DSM 113370T).
Keywords: Juan de Fuca Ridge microbes; Shewanella metallivivens; anaerobic respiration on metal(loid) oxides; hydrothermal vent; metal(loid) resistance; tube worm symbiont.