Virgibacillus doumboii sp. nov., a halophilic bacterium isolated from the stool of a healthy child in Mali

• Main Authors: S. Konate, A. Camara, C.I. Lo, M. Tidjani Alou, A. Hamidou Togo, S. Niare, N. Armstrong, A. Djimdé, M.A. Thera, F. Fenollar, D. Raoult, M. Million
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2021-07-01
• Series: New Microbes and New Infections
• Subjects: Child malnutrition; culturomics; Mali; taxonogenomics; Virgibacillus doumboii sp. nov.
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2052297521000548
• ISSN: 2052-2975

A moderately halophilic and strictly aerobic bacterium was isolated from a human stool as part of a study on the diagnosis of childhood malnutrition in Mali. Strain Marseille-Q1616T is a Gram-stain-positive, rod-shaped, catalase-positive and oxidase-negative bacterium. It has a genome size of 3.91 Mbp with 39.79% G+C content, which contains 3954 protein-coding genes including genes encoding phosphomycin resistance and Listeria monocytogenes, 16 rRNA genes and 64 tRNA genes. Strain Marseille-Q1616T exhibited a 96.3% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity and shared an OrthoANI value of 70.64% (the highest observed) with Virgibacillus kekensis, the phylogenetically closest validly published species. Based on phenotypic and phylogenetic evidence and genomic average nucleotide identity values, we suggest the creation of a new species within the Virgibacillus genus, named Virgibacillus doumboii sp. nov., type strain Marseille-Q1616T (= CSURQ1616).