A report of 22 unrecorded bacterial species in Korea, isolated from the North Han River basin in 2017

Culturable bacterial diversity was investigated using freshwater and sediment samples collected from the North Han River basin in 2017, as a part of the research program 'Survey of freshwater organisms and specimen collection'. Over a thousand bacterial strains were isolated from the samples and identified based on 16S rRNA gene sequences. Among the bacterial isolates, 22 strains showing higher than 98.7% sequence similarity with validly published bacterial species, but not reported in Korea, were classified as unrecorded species in Korea. The 22 bacterial strains were phylogenetically diverse and assigned to 6 classes, 11 orders, 15 families, and 21 different genera. At the generic level, the unreported species were affiliated with Flavobacterium of the class Flavobacteria, Flexibacter of the class Cytophagia, Blastomonas, Brevundimonas, Elstera, Rhizobium, Roseomonas, Sphingomonas, and Xanthobacter of the class Alphaproteobacteria, Albidiferax, Cupriavidus, Curvibacter, Ferribacterium, Hydrogenophaga, Iodobacter, Limnohabitans, Polaromonas, Undibacterium, and Variovorax of the class Betaproteobacteria, Pseudomonas of the class Gammaproteobacteria, and Arcobacter of the class Epsilonproteobacteria. The unreported bacterial species were further characterized by examining Gram reaction, colonial and cellular morphology, and biochemical properties. The detailed descriptions of 22 strains of the unreported bacterial species are also provided.