A report of 21 unreported bacterial species in Korea, belonging to the Betaproteobacteria

As a subset investigation to discover indigenous prokaryotic species in Korea, a total of 21 bacterial strains assigned to the class Betaproteobacteria were isolated from a wide range of environmental samples which collected from fresh water, roots of plants, mineral water and soil from ginseng farm. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that 21 isolated strains were most closely related to the class Betaproteobacteria, with high 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity (>99.1%) and constructed a robust phylogenetic clade with the closest species in the class Betaproteobacteria. These isolated species have no previous report or publication in Korea; therefore 17 species in 14 genera of 6 families in the order Burkholderiales, 1 species in the order Methylophilales, 2 species in 2 genera of 1 family in the order Neisseriales are reported for betaproteobacterial species found in Korea. Gram reaction, colony and cell morphology, basic biochemical characteristics, isolation source, and strain IDs are also described in the species description section and as an image.