"Bring to Lab" of 19 novel species among 60 isolates retrieved from a freshwater pond

We report here on the cultivation of numerous novel bacterial species from a eutrophic freshwater pond. A total of 60 strains, 15 strains per each culture medium, were obtained from the surface of a eutrophic freshwater pond by employing a conventional dilution-plating method with four different kinds of culture media, including R2A, 1/10R2A, PCA, and I/10PCA. Among the 60 strains isolated, 27 strains showed less than 97% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities to validly published species, and thus they are considered to comprise 19 novel species. Of the 27 strains assigned to the novel species, the majority of the strains (20 strains) were affiliated with the Alphaproteobacteria and Betaproteobacteria. The remaining 7 strains were affiliated with the Gammaproteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and Deinococci. Because we have isolated 19 novel species from a usual freshwater pond using a conventional culturing technique, our results suggest that an unexplored ecosystem, even if it looks like a common ecosystem found elsewhere, harbors diverse unidentified microbes, which will be definitely further characterized.