Dear Pwaveno

To claim new species, you must perform few of the following assessment on the microbes to check the differences and similarities with the closes or neighbour species:

1. Chemotaxonomy (e.g. lipid profiles etc...)

2. Genomic (e.g. 16s rDNA)

3. Morphology

4. Biochemical test

5. Phenotypic responses on C sources

Once, you confirmed it is new, then you need to proceed deposit into at least 2 international culture collection centre such as DSMZ, KCCM, CGMCC etc....

You seek advices on the nomenclature of the bacteria according to the International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria (Bacteriological Code).

Finally you can declare the new species and publish in the the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology or Antonie van Leeuwenhoek or Journal of Microbiology.

Regards

Dear Pwaveno

To claim new species, you must perform few of the following assessment on the microbes to check the differences and similarities with the closes or neighbour species:

1. Chemotaxonomy (e.g. lipid profiles etc...)

2. Genomic (e.g. 16s rDNA)

3. Morphology

4. Biochemical test

5. Phenotypic responses on C sources

Once, you confirmed it is new, then you need to proceed deposit into at least 2 international culture collection centre such as DSMZ, KCCM, CGMCC etc....

You seek advices on the nomenclature of the bacteria according to the International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria (Bacteriological Code).

Finally you can declare the new species and publish in the the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology or Antonie van Leeuwenhoek or Journal of Microbiology.

Regards

• I agree with that, but the best is look for the description of other species from the same genus in order to compare yours with the previous ones. Probably is better if you contact the group that is working on the taxonomy of that group and do a collaborative study.

Many thanks Prof. Spyros, Prof. Yoke and Prof. Arturo. We have sequenced 63 bacterial isolates from the recent flood in Malaysia. Prof. Yoke we have done no.s 2-4. Thanks for further suggestions. I contacted some novel species researchers and one of them for Acinetobacter has recommended further gene sequencing of additional genes which we are considering. Within the limit of available resources we will pursue our studies to logical conclusions 

Dear Sir,

You need to go for DNA-DNA hybridization and whole genome sequencing to report new species of bacteria.

Many thanks Dr. Kamala and Dr. Sandip, I will consider your suggestion. I believe that at least 1 or 2 of our isolates may be new species never reported before. However, whole genome sequencing is expensive unless we are able to secure some research grant or funding. 

Follow the Guidelines of The International Committee on Systematic Bacteriology (ICSB). You should be fine if your data meets the requirements. Good luck. 

Do genomic DNA sequencing .this will tell you if this strain is new or not.

Dear Pwaveno,

There are articles that explain in detail the process to follow. You can read:

- B. J. Tindall, R. Rossello-Mora, H.-J. Busse, W. Ludwig and P. Kampfer.

"Notes on the characterization of prokaryote strains for taxonomic purposes"

IJSEM 2010, vol 60: 249-266, DOI 10. 1099/ijs.0.016949-0

- P. Kampfer, S. Buczolits, A. Albrecht, H.-J. Busse and E. Stackebrandt

"Towards a standardized format for the description of a novel species (of an established genus): Ochrobactrum gallinifaecis sp. nov.

IJSEM 2003, vol 53: 893-896, DOI 10.1099/ijs.0.02710-0

To submit your article you may also consider Systematic an Applied Microbiology.

Good luck

Phylogenetic construction is bases on mathematical models if you change  few nucleotide sequences you may get different tree. How much sequence similarity with reported strains you have to check. The bacterial identification usually done by  16s rDNA. You have done complete sequence or partial sequence plz check once. Complete sequence only gives you best results.  

first, you can blast the 16S sequence of your bacteria against eztaxon 16S database to check the sequence similarity between your bacteria and the most related species. If the similarity is lower than 97%, this should be safe, but some species the threshold can even be higher than 99.5%. Check the published papers on IJSEM for the related species to determine the threshold and what experiments you need to do to announce a new species.

First of all register your 16s sequence in GenBank to obtain a reference number and to ensure that if it is a new specie it woul be figured that you have been the first one.

You must performed the DNA-DNA hibridation to ensure that is a new specie.

After confirming it. You should send it to two reference oficial  centers to figure in their culture collections.

Then as some one has mentioned above you must do the chemotaxonomic analysis.

After you do all of this you mus published your reort in Antonie Leewenhoek magazine or in International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

The isolation must be done at least twice.

If you have any more doubt don´t hesitate in doing another question.

Do the 16rDNA sequencing of the species. Then carry out local alignment using ungapped BLAST. Report this to GeneBank,and you will be given an permanent accession  number for this species with. Now deposit this with any international culture collection centers; from where you will get another code. Report this with your sepcies. 

The discussion above has included almost all the aspects of reporting a novel species! The approach of description of an isolate as representative Type strain for a novel species is known as Polyphasic approach. One important but challenging method is DNA-DNA hybridisation, which needs to be performed with a close species. A DDH value of 70% or greater has been recommended as a suitable threshold for the definition of members of a species.  However as all laboratory are not capable of performing this and getting a close Type species for doing it with is also not always available, so WGS by NGS methods is one good method, as we have WGS available for almost all prokaryotic genera now. 

V Good text for all aspects of identification of novel species is described: Taxonomy of Prokaryotes by Rainey F and Oren A under methods in Microbiology Vol 38 under AP Elsevier. Also read "Notes on the characterization of prokaryote strains

for taxonomic purposes. (International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (2010), 60, 249–266 by B. J. Tindall,et al.

Finally you need a heart full of adventure!

The answers are there in above comments. For a concrete approach, you may refer to the paper: International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (2012), 62, 144–149. Description of Christensenella minuta gen. nov.,

sp. nov., isolated from human faeces, which forms a

distinct branch in the order Clostridiales, and

proposal of Christensenellaceae fam. nov.

Masami Morotomi, Fumiko Nagai and Yohei Watanabe   Yakult Central Institute for Microbiological Research, 1796 Yaho, Kunitachi, 186-8650 Tokyo,

Japan. Please go for it.