Report of 21 unrecorded bacterial species in Korea belonging to the phylum Actinobacteria, discovered during the survey in 2020

The phylum Actinobacteria includes many groups of aerobic, Gram-stain-positive, rod, or filamentous shaped bacteria. Actinobacteria are known for multicellular differentiation in some groups, and also for production of various secondary metabolites such as antibiotics. During a series of extensive surveys of indigenous prokaryotic species diversity in Korea, bacterial strains belonging to Actinobacteria were isolated from various sources of terrestrial environments. A total of 21 bacterial strains, belonging to 10 genera in 8 families, were isolated as unrecorded species in Korea. Among them, 11 were assigned to the family Streptomycetaceae, two species assigned to each of the families Microbacteriaceae, Mycobacteriaceae and Nocardioidaceae, and one species assigned to each of the families Euzebyaceae, Corynebacteriaceae, Micrococcaceae and Intrasporangiaceae. At the genus level, Streptomyces (10 species) was the most abundant, followed by Microbacterium and Mycolicibacterium(2 species each), and one species in each of the genera Corynebacterium, Euzebya, Arthrobacter, Terracoccus, Kribbella, Nocardioides and Yinghuangia. The detailed descriptions of each unrecorded species are provided.