Natronoglycomyces albus gen. nov., sp. nov, a haloalkaliphilic actinobacterium from a soda solonchak soil

A haloalkaliphilic hydrolytic actinobacterium, strain ACPA22^T, was enriched and isolated in pure culture from saline alkaline soil (soda solonchak) in northeastern Mongolia. The isolate was facultatively alkaliphilic, growing at pH 6.5–10.5 (optimum at 7.3–9.0) and highly salt-tolerant, tolerating up to 3 M total Na⁺ as carbonates. The hydrolytic nature of ACPA22^T was confirmed by two different growth-dependent methods and by the presence of multiple glycosidase-encoding genes in the genome. The 16S rRNA gene-based phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that strain ACPA22^T formed a deep-branching lineage within the family Glycomycetaceae, with the highest sequence similarity value to Glycomyces buryatensis 18^T (92.1 %) and Salininema proteolyticum Miq-4^T (91.8 %). The average amino acid identity values (56.1–61.5 %) between ACPA22^T and other Glycomycetaceae members with available genomes did not exceed the threshold reported for different genera. The cell wall of ACPA22^T contained meso-diaminopimelic acid, glycine, glutamic acid and alanine in a molar ratio, characteristic of the peptidoglycan type A1γ'. The whole-cell sugars included mannose, galactose, arabinose, ribose and xylose. The major menaquinones were MK-10(Н₄) and MK-11(Н₄). The identified polar lipids were represented by phosphatidylethanolamine, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylinositol and phosphatidylinositol mannosides. In addition, the strain had a few unidentified characteristic polar lipids, including an amine-containing phospholipid with chromatographic mobility similar to that of phosphatidylinositol. The polar lipid fatty acids were dominated by anteiso-C_17 : 0 and iso-C_16 : 0. The genome included a chromosome of 3.94 Mbp (G+C content 61.5 mol%) encoding 3285 proteins and two plasmids of 59.8 and 14.8 kBp. Based on the data obtained in this study, a new genus and species, Natronoglycomyces albus gen. nov., sp. nov, is proposed with the type strain ACPA22^T (=DSM 106290^T=VKM Ac-2771^T).