Dietzia cinnamea

Classification

Bacteria

Actinobacteria

Actinobacteria

Actinomycetales

Corynebacterineae

Dietziaceae

Dietzia

Species: Dietzia cinnamea

NCBI Taxonomy ID:[1]

Description and Significance

Samples of this organism have been extracted from petroleum contaminated soil characterized in acidic sandy loam Cambisol soil in a protected habitat in Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil as well as the perianal swab from a patient with a bone marrow transplant (Yassin, 2006; von der Weid, 2006). Multiple strains of Dietzia have been found in soil, deep sea sediment, and soda lakes (Gerday & Glansdorff, 2007).Dietzia cinnamea is rod shaped in the medical swab while the P4 strain from the soil samples produces a coccoid shape. The organism is approximately 1.4 micrometers long, forms smooth, yellow to orange colonies on agar plates and is single or arranges in small connected colonies (Von der Weid, 2006). It is gram positive and has a high G+C content, meaning a high number of Guanine and Cytosine linkages in its DNA(Von der Weid, 2006). It displays snapping division, which is the arrangement of cells in a palisade or angular manor resulting from binary fission (Prescott, 2002). This is a characteristic of the genera Arthrobacter and Corynebacterium.

D. cinnamea is capable of degrading a range of petroleum hydrocarbons which can have beneficial environmental implications in today’s world. Other genera that have hydrocarbon degrading strains include Mycobacterium, Rhodococcus, and Dietzia. The strain P4 is able to degrade a range of n-alkanes (C11-C36), pristane, and phytane and is able to grow in the presence of carbazole, quinoline, naphthalene, toluene, gasoline, and diesel (Von der Weid, 2006).

Genome Structure

The full DNA code for D.cinnamea has been partially sequenced and contains 550 bp (Von der Weid, 2006).