A phthalate esters-degrading bacterial strain, designated QH-11 T , was isolated from an activated sludge wastewater treatment plant in Beijing, PR China. The cells were aerobic, Gram-stain-positive, non-motile, catalase-positive, oxidasenegative, short rods and formed white colonies on trypticase soy agar. This isolate contained meso-diaminopimelic acid as the diagnostic diamino acid and whole-cell hydrolysates contained arabinose and ribose. Diphosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylethanolamine

more »

... were the predominant polar lipids. According to the results of full-length of 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, QH-11 T represented a member of the genus Gordonia and showed the highest sequence similarity to Gordonia hydrophobica DSM 44015 T (99.2 %), but was distinguishable by a low level of DNA-DNA relatedness (37.8 %). Genome-based comparisons indicated a clear distinction from the top ten most similar type strains (16S rRNA gene sequence) with pairwise average nucleotide identities (ANI) between 74.6 and 83.4 %. The predominant respiratory quinone was MK-9(H 2 ), the mycolic acids present had 56 to 62 carbon atoms, and the major fatty acids were C 16 : 0 (33.3 %), C 17 : 1 !8c (23.4 %) and C 18 : 1 !9c (17.9 %). The DNA G+C content was 68.0 mol%. On the basis of the results of DNA-DNA hybridization, ANI and physiological and biochemical tests, it is proposed that QH-11 T represents a novel species of the genus Gordonia, for which the name Gordonia phthalatica sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is QH-11 T (CICC 24107 T =KCTC 39933 T ).