Mesorhizobium comanense sp. nov., isolated from groundwater

Strain 3P27G6(T) was isolated from an artesian well connected to the thermal water basin of Comano Terme, Province of Trento, Italy. In phylogenetic analyses based on multilocus sequence analysis, strain 3P27G6(T) clustered together with Mesorhizobium australicum WSM2073(T). Genome sequencing produced a 99.51 % complete genome, with a length of 7363057 bp and G+C content of 63.53 mol%, containing 6897 coding sequences, 55 tRNA and three rRNA. Average nucleotide identity analysis revealed that all distances calculated between strain 3P27G6(T) and the other Mesorhizobium genomes were below 0.9, indicating that strain 3P27G6(T) represents a new species. Therefore, we propose the name Mesorhizobium comanense sp. nov. with the type strain 3P27G6(T) (=DSM 110654(T)=CECT 30067(T)). Strain 3P27G6(T) is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped, aerobic bacterium. Growth condition, antibiotic susceptibility, metabolic and fatty acid-methyl esters profiles of the strain were determined. Only few nodulation and nitrogen fixation genes were found in the genome, suggesting that this strain may not be specialized in nodulation or in nitrogen fixation.