Isolation, Characterization and Numerical Taxonomy of Novel Oxalate-oxidizing Bacteria

The present work is aimed at providing additional new pure cultures of oxalate utilizing bacteria and its preliminary characterization for further work in the field of oxalate-metabolism and taxonomic studies. The taxonomy of 14 mesophilic, aerobic oxalotrophic bacteria isolated by an enrichment culture technique from soils rhizosphers, and the juice of the petiole/stem tissue of plants was investigated. Isolates were characterized with 95 morphological, biochemical and physiological tests. Cellular lipid components and carotenoids of isolates were also studied as an aid to taxonomic characterization. All isolates were Gram-negative, oxidase and catalase positive and no growth factors were required. In addition to oxalates, some of the strains grow on methanol and/or formate. The taxonomic similarities among isolates, reference strains or previously reported oxalotrophic bacteria were analysed by using the Simple Matching (S/ sub SM/) and Jaccard (S$\_$J/) Coefficients. Clustering was performed by using the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic averages (UPGMA) algorithm. The oxalotrophic strains formed five major and two single-member clusters at the 70-86% similarity level. Based on the numerical taxonomy, isolates were separated into three phenotypic groups. Pink-pigmented strains belonged to Methylobacterium extorquens, yellow-pigmented strains were most similar to Pseudomonas sp. YOx and Xanthobacter autorophicus, and heterogeneous non-pigmented strains were closely related to genera Azospirillum, Ancylobacter, Burkholderia and Pseudomonas. New strains belonged to the genera Pseudomonas, Azospirillum and Ancylobacter that differ taxonomically from other known oxalate oxidizers were obtained. Numerical analysis indicated that some strains of the yellow-pigmented and nonpigmented clusters might represent new species.