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Spiroplasma turonicum sp. nov. from Haematopota horse flies (Diptera: Tabanidae) in France

¹Déartement de Microbiologic & Santé Publique, Faculté de Médecine, 29285 Brest Cedex, France
²Unité des Systémes Vectoriels, Institut Pasteur, 75724 Paris Cedex, France
³Laboratoire de Biologie Cellulaire et Moléculaire, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, 33883 Villenave d'Ornon Cedex, France
⁴Vegetable Laboratory, US Department of Agriculture, Beltsville, MD 20705, USA
⁵Department of Anatomical Sciences, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA
⁶Mycoplasma Section, Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Frederick Cancer Research Facility, Frederick, MD 21702, USA

Author for correspondence: Claude Chastel. Tel: +33 2 98 01 64 23. Fax: +33 2 98 01 64 74.

ABSTRACT

Strain Tab4c^Ta helical prokaryote that was isolated from the body of a Haematopota sp. fly collected in Champchevrier, Indre-et-Loire, Touraine, France, was found to be a member of the class Mollicutes. The cells of strain Tab4c^Twere small, motile helices that were devoid of a cell wall. The organism passed through filters with mean pore diameters as small as 0.20 mm. Strain Tab4c^Tgrew rapidly in liquid SP-4 medium at both 30 and 37 °C. The organism fermented glucose but did not hdrolyse arginine or urea, and did not require serum for growth. In preliminary electrophoretic analyses, the cell protein patterns of strain Tab4c^Twere distinct from those of 14 other spiroplasmas found in mosquitoes, deer flies and horse flies from Europe and the Far-East. In reciprocal metabolism inhibition and deformation serological tests, employing antigens and antisera representative of spiroplasma groups l-XXXIII (including all sub-groups), plus ungrouped strains BARC 1901 and BARC 2649, no serological relationship with Tab4c^Twas found. The G+C content of the DNA of strain Tab4c^Twas about 25·1 mol% and its genome size was 1.305 kbp. It is proposed that spiroplasma strain Tab4c^Tbe assigned to group XVII (presently vacant) and that strain (ATCC 700271^T) is the type strain of a new species, Spiroplasma turonicum.

Key Words: Spiroplasma turonicum sp. nov. • Mollicutes • Diptera