A stable home for an equine pathogen: valid publication of the binomial Prescottella equi gen. nov., comb. nov., and reclassification of four rhodococcal species into the genus Prescottella.

Abstract

Opinion 106 of the Judicial Commission has clarified the nomenclature of the taxon variously named Rhodococcus equi , ‘Prescottella equi’ and Rhodococcus hoagii . As a consequence, we present here the genus name Prescottella and that of its nomenclatural type species, Prescottella equi comb. nov., for valid publication and propose the reclassification of four rhodococcal species as novel combinations in the genus, namely Prescottella agglutinans Guo et al. 2015 comb. nov., Prescottella defluvii Kämpfer et al. 2014 comb. nov., Prescottella soli Li et al. 2015 comb. nov. and Prescottella subtropica Lee et al. 2019 comb. nov. In addition, we note that a clinical isolate, strain 86–07 (=W8901), likely represents an additional species within the genus Prescottella . Nearly a century after the original description of the type strain of the type species as Corynebacterium equi , we provide a stable home for Prescottella equi and its relatives.

Genome-based taxonomic rearrangement of Oceanobacter-related bacteria including the description of Thalassolituus hydrocarbonoclasticus sp. nov. and Thalassolituus pacificus sp. nov. and emended description of the genus Thalassolituus

“…Additionally, a POCP threshold of at least 50% was proposed to determine whether the two species belong to the same genus ( Qin et al, 2014 ). However, several recent studies have suggested that a 50% POCP threshold for genus delineation is overly stringent and should be reevaluated, such that higher values (typically in the range 58–66%) may more appropriate ( Aliyu et al, 2016 ; Orata et al, 2018 ; Wirth and Whitman, 2018 ; Gupta, 2019 ; de la Haba et al, 2021 ; Xu et al, 2021 ; Sangal et al, 2022 ). In this study, the POCP values within the HD group (range 55.2–99.4%, mean 69.2%) were all above 50% and higher than those between the members of the HD and NHD groups (range 46.3–60.4%, mean 54.3%) ( Supplementary Figure 2 ).…”

Taxogenomic status of phylogenetically distant Frankia clusters warrants their elevation to the rank of genus: A description of Protofrankia gen. nov., Parafrankia gen. nov., and Pseudofrankia gen. nov. as three novel genera within the family Frankiaceae

“…The POCP threshold of 50% originally proposed for genus delineation by Qin et al (2014) has been shown to be inappropriate for multiple taxa ( Aliyu et al, 2016 ; Pannekoek et al, 2016 ; Li et al, 2017 ; Lopes-Santos et al, 2017 ; Orata et al, 2018 ; Wirth and Whitman, 2018 ; Park et al, 2022 ). Sangal et al (2022) considered this POCP cutoff as overly stringent and proposed its reappraisement to 58–66%. The inter-cluster pairwise POCP values obtained in this study (33.5–61.3%) are within this proposed new range.…”

Specific preadaptations of Rhodococcus equi cooperate with its Virulence‐associated protein A during macrophage infection

“…Rhodococcus equi ( Prescotella equi ; Sangal et al, 2022) is a Gram‐positive actinomycete, a close relative of pathogenic mycobacteria, and both an environmental soil bacterium and a facultative intracellular pathogen. It can cause life‐threatening pulmonary infections in young foals and in immunocompromised humans, particularly in AIDS patients (Albrecht, 1997; Prescott, 1991; von Bargen & Haas, 2009).…”

“…We observed that this was not the case for nearly all tested bacteria. Only R. equi and its closest relative, R. defluvii (or Prescotella defluvii ; Sangal et al, 2022), could make use of VapA under certain circumstances due to a number of preadaptations and the case of R. defluvii turned out to be a paradigm for how ‘thermal restriction’ limits bacterial growth in mammals.…”