LAUSR

A new petroleum-degrading bacterium, designated strain GC2 T , was isolated from Bozkuş 1 petroleum station in Diyarbakir, located in the southeast of Turkey. Cells were Gram-negative staining, aerobic, coccoid-rods, non-motile, non-spore-forming. The bacterium was found to degrade 100% of n -alkanes ranging from C11 to C34 presented in the 1% crude oil after incubation of 7 days. The membrane phospholipids were 1,2 diacylglycero-3-phosphorylethanolamine (PEA), phosphatidylglycerol (PG), dipalmitoyl-sn-glycerol 1- phosphocholine (PC1), 1,2 dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine monohydrate (PC3), cardiolipin also called diphosphatidylglycerol (CL) and l-α- phosphatidic acid, dipalmitoyl (AP); predominant respiratory ubiquinone was Q-8 and C16:0, C18:1ω9c and C16:1 were the major cellular fatty acids. The 16S rRNA sequence analysis revealed that the strain GC2 T was a member of genus Acinetobacter and was most closely related to Acinetobacter lwoffii DSM 2403  T (99.79%), Acinetobacter pseudolwoffii ANC 5318  T (98.83%) and Acinetobacter harbinensis HITLi 7  T (98.14%). The rpoB and gyrB gene sequence analysis confirmed that the strain GC2 T was a member of genus Acinetobacter and that the closest relative was Acinetobacter lwoffii DSM 2403  T (99.08% and 100% similarity, respectively). DNA-DNA hybridization values between GC2 T and its closest relatives ranged from 65.6% (with A. lwoffii ) to 5.1% (with A. venetianus ). The whole genome sequence of strain GC2 T was obtained. The DNA G + C content of this strain was determined to be 42.9 mol %. ANI indexes, in silico estimations of DDH values and wet lab DDH values demonstrated that strain GC2 T represents an independent genomospecies. On the basis of phenotypic characteristics, chemotaxonomic, phylogenetic data and DNA–DNA hybridization and whole genome analysis, we propose to assign strain GC2 T as a new species of the genus Acinetobacter , for which the name Acinetobacter mesopotamicus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain of this species is GC2 T (DSM 26953 T = JCM 31073 T). The whole genome of strain GC2 T has been deposited at DDBJ/ENA/GenBank under the accession JAALFF010000000.