• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.905-912
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• 2013

A novel species, Metschnikowia cibodasensis, is proposed to accommodate eight strains (ID03-$0093^T$, ID03-0094, ID03-0095, ID03-0096, ID03-0097, ID03-0098, ID03-0099, and ID03-0109) isolated from flowers of Saurauia pendula, Berberis nepalensis, and Brunfelsia americana in Cibodas Botanical Garden, West Java, Indonesia. The type strain of M. cibodasensis is ID03-$0093^T$ (= NBRC $101693^T$ =UICC $Y-335^T$ = BTCC-$Y25^T$). The common features of M. cibodasensis are a spherical to ellipsoidopedunculate shaped ascus, which contains one or two needle-shaped ascospores, and lyse at maturity. Asci generally develop directly from vegetative cells but sometimes from chlamydospores. The neighbor-joining tree based on the D1/D2 domain of nuclear large subunit (nLSU) ribosomal DNA sequences strongly supports that M. cibodasensis (eight strains) and its closest teleomorphic species, M. reukaufii, are different species by a 100% bootstrap value. The type strain of M. cibodasensis, ID03-$0093^T$, differed from M. reukaufii NBRC $1679^T$ by six nt (five substitutions and one deletion) in their D1/D2 region of nLSU rDNA, and by 18 nt (five deletions, four insertions, and nine substitutions) in their internal transcribed spacer regions of rDNA, respectively. Four strains representative of M. cibodasensis (ID03-$0093^T$, ID03-0095, ID03-0096, and ID03-0099) showed a mol% G+C content of $44.05{\pm}0.25%$, whereas that of M. reukaufii NBRC $1679^T$ was 41.3%. The low value of DNA-DNA homology (5-16%) in four strains of M. cibodasensis and M. reukaufii NBRC $1679^T$ strongly supported that these strains represent a distinct species.