An aerobic, Gram-negative-staining, motile, psychrophilic bacterium, designated strain S8-3 T , was isolated from alpine soil. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain S8-3 T was related to the genus Sphingomonas and had highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity with Sphingomonas oligophenolica S213 T (98.0 %). 16S RNA gene sequence similarity between strain S8-3 T and Sphingomonas paucimobilis ATCC 29837 T (the type species of the genus Sphingomonas) was 93.0 %. Strain S8-3 T contained Q-10 as the ubiquinone and C 18 : 1 v7c (65.0 %) and C 14 : 0 2-OH (13.4 %) as the dominant fatty acids (.10 %). The major polyamines were the triamine sym-homospermidine and spermidine. The polar lipid profile contained sphingoglycolipid, phosphatidylglycerol, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylmonomethylethanolamine. The DNA G+C content was 64.1 mol%. Combined data from phenotypic, phylogenetic and DNA-DNA relatedness studies demonstrated that strain S8-3 T is a representative of a novel species of the genus Sphingomonas, for which the name Sphingomonas alpina sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is S8-3 T (5DSM 22537 T 5LMG 26055 T ).The genus Sphingomonas was first proposed by Yabuuchi et al. (1990) and has been emended subsequently by Takeuchi et al. (1993Takeuchi et al. ( , 2001, Yabuuchi et al. (2002) and Busse et al. (2003) to accommodate aerobic, Gramnegative and non-spore-forming bacteria that are characterized chemotaxonomically by the absence of 3-hydroxy fatty acids and by the presence of 2-hydroxymyristic acid (C 14 : 0 2-OH), Q-10 as the respiratory quinone and symhomospermidine as the key polyamine. So far, the nomenclature of Takeuchi et al. (2001) is generally used (Busse et al., 2003). Strain S8-3 T was isolated from alpine soil collected in the Hohe Tauern/Grossglockner area (Piffalpe) on the north slope at 1500 m above sea level . The strain was isolated as previously described (Zhang et al., 2010). One of the pure cultures was yellow-pigmented and was designated S8-3 T . Strain S8-3 T was routinely cultured on R2A agar (containing 0.05 % yeast extract, 0.05 % peptone, 0.05 % Casamino acids, 0.05 % glucose, 0.05 % starch, 0.03 % sodium pyruvate, 0.03 % K 2 HPO 4 , 0.005 % MgSO 4 , 1.5 % agar; pH 7; Reasoner & Geldreich, 1985) at 20 u C, and stored as a suspension in skimmed milk (10 %, w/v) at 280 u C. Sphingomonas echinoides DSM 1805 T , Sphingomonas oligophenolica S213 T and Sphingomonas glacialis C16y T (5DSM 22294 T ; Zhang et al., 2011) were routinely grown on R2A agar at 20 u C and used as reference strains.DNA of strain S8-3 T was extracted and purified as described by Sambrook et al. (1989). The 16S rRNA gene was amplified by PCR (Margesin et al., 2012) with a pair of universal primers, 27F (59-AGAGTTTGATCCTGGCTC-AG-39) and 1541R (59-AAGGAGGTGATCCAGCCGCA-39). The amplification product was cloned into vector pGEM-T Easy (Promega), and the recombinant plasmid was propagated in Escherichia coli according to the manufacturer's instructions ...