Abstract
Thirty-three Yersinia strains previously characterized by the French Yersinia National Reference Laboratory (YNRL) and isolated from humans and animals were suspected to belong to six novel species by a recently described core genome multilocus sequence typing scheme. These strains and five additional strains from the YNRL were characterized using a polyphasic taxonomic approach including a phylogenetic analysis based on 500 core genes, determination of average nucleotide identity (ANI), determination of DNA G+C content and identification of phenotypic features. Phylogenetic analysis confirmed that the 38 studied strains formed six well-demarcated clades. ANI values between these clades and their closest relatives were <94.7 % and ANI values within each putative novel species were >97.5 %. Distinctive biochemical characteristics were identified in five out of the six novel species. All of these data demonstrated that the 38 strains belong to six novel species of the genus Yersinia: Yersinia artesiana sp. nov., type strain IP42281(T) (=CIP 111845(T)=DSM 110725(T)); Yersinia proxima sp. nov., type strain IP37424(T) (=CIP 111847(T)=DSM 110727(T)); Yersinia alsatica sp. nov., type strain IP38850(T) (=CIP 111848(T)=DSM 110726(T)); Yersinia vastinensis sp. nov., type strain IP38594(T) (=CIP 111844(T)=DSM 110738(T)); Yersinia thracica sp. nov., type strain IP34646(T) (=CIP 111842(T)=DSM 110736(T)); and Yersinia occitanica sp. nov., type strain IP35638(T) (=CIP 111843(T)=DSM 110739(T)).