A report of 29 unrecorded bacterial species in Korea, belonging to the Alphaproteobacteria

As a subset study to discover indigenous prokaryotic species in Korea, a total of 29 bacterial strains assigned to the classes Alphaproteobacteria were isolated from various environmental samples collected from plant root, ginseng soil, forest soil, marsh, mud flat, freshwater and seawater. From the high 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity (>99.1%) and formation of a robust phylogenetic clade with the closest species, it was determined that each strain belonged to each independent and predefined bacterial species. There is no official report that these 29 species included in Alphaproteobacteria is have been described in Korea; therefore 14 species of 9 genera in the order Rhizobiales, 7 species of 6 genera in the order Sphingomonadales and 4 species of 2 genera in the order Caulobacterales and 3 species in the order Rhodobacterales and 1 species in the order Rhodospirillales found in Korea. Gram reaction, colony and cell morphology, basic biochemical characteristics, isolation source, and strain IDs are also described in the species description section.