Chitiniphilus shinanonensis gen. nov., sp nov., a novel chitin-degrading bacterium belonging to Betaproteobacteria

A bacterial strain capable of degrading chitin, strain SAY3(T), was isolated from moat water of Ueda Castle in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. The strain was gram-negative, curved rod-shaped, facultatively anaerobic, and motile with a single polar flagellum. It grew well with chitin as a sole carbon source. The cellular fatty acids profiles showed the presence of C16:1 omega 7c and C16:0 as the major components. The G+C content of DNA was 67.6 mol% and Q-8 was the major respiratory quinone. A 16S rRNA gene sequence-based phylogenetic analysis showed the strain belonged to the family Neisseriaceae but was distantly related (