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Molecular systematics support the revival of Mycobacterium salmoniphilum (ex Ross 1960) sp. nov., nom. rev., a species closely related to Mycobacterium chelonae

¹ Center for Fish Disease Research, Department of Microbiology, 220 Nash Hall, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331-3404, USA
² Mycobacteriology Branch, Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
³ Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK
⁴ School of Veterinary Medicine, Ilam University, PO Box 69315-516, Ilam, Iran

Correspondence
Christopher M. Whipps
whippsc{at}onid.orst.edu

Mycobacterial infections in fish are usually attributed to strains of Mycobacterium marinum, Mycobacterium chelonae and Mycobacterium fortuitum. Bacteria identified as M. chelonae have been isolated numerous times from salmonid fishes. Recently, this bacterium has been associated with salmon mortalities in the aquaculture industry. An M. chelonae-like species from salmon, ‘Mycobacterium salmoniphilum’, was described in 1960. However, the species name lost standing in nomenclature when it was omitted from the 1980 Approved Lists of Bacterial Names because the species could not be distinguished with confidence from M. fortuitum. In the 1980s, mycobacteria isolated from salmon were characterized as a distinct subspecies, ‘Mycobacterium chelonae subsp. piscarium’. Again, the uncertainty of the validity of the species resulted in the subsequent withdrawal of the name. Since then, most studies have considered isolates from salmon to be M. chelonae. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the small-subunit rRNA, hsp65 and rpoB genes was used to examine the taxonomic relatedness of type cultures and authentic isolates in our culture collection available from earlier studies. The M. chelonae-like strains from salmon were phylogenetically distinct from other Mycobacterium strains and members of the M. chelonae complex. Moreover, the cell-wall-bound mycolic acids were not representative of known mycolate patterns for M. chelonae-complex organisms. These results supported the status of the species as a separate taxon and effect the valid publication of the name ‘M. salmoniphilum’ as Mycobacterium salmoniphilum (ex Ross 1960) sp. nov., nom. rev., with the type strain SC^T (=ATCC 13578^T =DSM 43276^T).

The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the 16S rRNA gene, hsp65 and rpoB sequences of M. salmoniphilum strains are DQ866764–DQ866770, DQ866777–DQ866783 and DQ866790–DQ866797 (respectively DQ866768, DQ866777 and DQ866790 for the type strain).

A tree resulting from Bayesian analysis of rpoB sequences and a strict consensus tree from parsimony analysis of ITS sequences are available as supplementary material with the online version of this paper.

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