The phylum armatimonadetes

Abstract

Armatimonadetes constitutes a moderately abundant and phylogenetically diverse bacterial phylum. Prior to the official description of the phylum by Tamaki et al. 2011, Armatimonadetes phylotypes were classified as candidate division OP10, first identified by Hugenholtz et al. 1998 in a molecular study conducted at Obsidian Pool, Yellowstone National Park. While ca. 500 nearly full-length nonredundant public domain 16S rRNA gene sequences cluster into as many as 12 class-level groupings within this phylum, only four cultivated representatives have so far been described. The phylum Armatimonadetes is defined on a phylogenetic basis by comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis of Armatimonas rosea YO-36T (Tamaki et al. 2011; = NBRC 105658T = DSM 23562T; GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number AB529679), Chthonomonas calidirosea T49T (Lee et al. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 61(10):2482-2490, 2011; = DSM 23976T = ICMP 18418T; GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number AM749780), Chthonomonas-like strain P488 (Stott et al. 2008; GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number AM749768), and Fimbriimonas ginsengisoli strain Gsoil 348T (Im et al. 2012; = KACC 14959T = JCM 17079T; GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number GQ339893). There are few common features shared by the cultivated strains, including aerobic, oligotrophic metabolism, and Gram-negative staining cells.