A polyphasic approach was applied to investigate the diversity of microbiota that evolved during cold storage beef ripening. Isolate V4/DAB/S4/2aT with a unique BOX-rep-PCR fingerprint profile revealed more than 99 % nucleotide identities upon pairwise comparisons of 16S rDNA sequences from the type strains
Pseudomonas versuta
DSM 101070T,
Pseudomonas saxonica
DSM 108989T,
Pseudomonas deceptionensis
DSM 26521T and
Pseudomonas weihenstephanensis
DSM 29166T, placing it within the
Pseudomonas fragi
/ lundensis branch of the genus
Pseudomonas
. Additional rpoB based comparison revealed
P. versuta
DSM 101070T as the nearest relative, with 98.5 % nucleotide identity. Calculation of ANIb values of the V4/DAB/S4/2aT draft genome identified
P. versuta
DSM 101070T with 90.1 %,
P. deceptionensis
DSM 26521T with 85.1 %,
P. fragi
DSM 3456T with 84.4 %,
Pseudomonas psychrophila
DSM 17535T and
Pseudomonas bubulae
DSM 107389T with 84.2 % similarities each. Pairwise genome-to-genome distance calculations [digital DNA–DNA hybridization (dDDH)] resulted in values of 47.1, 35.1, 34.8, 34.2 and 34.1 %, respectively. A second isolate was detected years later in ground beef and showed ANIb values of 99.3 % and dDDH of 96.1 % relatedness to V4/DAB/S4/2aT. The DNA G+C content was 58.6 mol% for both isolates. The predominant cellular fatty acids of V4/DAB/S4/2aT were C16 : 0, C18 : 1ω7c, C17 : 0 cyclo and a summed feature containing C16 : 1ω7c and/or C15 : 0 iso 2-OH. The major polar lipids were phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol and diphosphatidylglycerol, the major respiratory quinone was Q9, with a small portion of Q8. The combined data on genotypic and phenotypic features support the proposal of a novel species, for which the name Pseudomonas paraversuta sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is V4/DAB/S4/2aT (=DSM 111361T=LMG 31844T) and a second isolate is UBT376 (=DSM 111360=LMG 31845).