Virgibacillus doumboii sp. nov., a halophilic bacterium isolated from the stool of a healthy child in Mali

A moderately halophilic and strictly aerobic bacterium was isolated from a human stool as part of a study on the diagnosis of childhood malnutrition in Mali. Strain Marseille-Q1616(T) is a Gram-stain-positive, rod-shaped, catalase-positive and oxidase-negative bacterium. It has a genome size of 3.91 Mbp with 39.79% G+C content, which contains 3954 protein-coding genes including genes encoding phosphomycin resistance and Listeria monocytogenes, 16 rRNA genes and 64 tRNA genes. Strain Marseille-Q1616(T) exhibited a 96.3% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity and shared an ORTHOANI value of 70.64% (the highest observed) with Virgibacillus kekensis, the phylogenetically closest validly published species. Based on phenotypic and phylogenetic evidence and genomic average nucleotide identity values, we suggest the creation of a new species within the Virgibacillus genus, named Virgibacillus doumboii sp. nov., type strain Marseille-Q1616(T) (= CSURQ1616). (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.